Blackhawk Down
by Lillyflora
Summary: Clint comes back from what should have been a minor mission missing something vital to his-and Natasha's- lives. As for the title-oh yeah, I totally went there. Now rated for very mature content and language.
1. Blackhawk Down

**Author's note**: So as for the title- yep, I totally went there. Consider me the biggest sap on the planet; I just could not help it. The giggle factor was too high.

I had this thought for a story immediately after seeing the movie. I have this weird thing for amnesia fics- there's just so much drama to be created.

So there are a few things you need to know to understand this story. This takes place maybe 6 months after "Avengers" and "Uncompromised" (while you don't need to read it to understand this I recommend you do just to get the gist of the characters as I view them) and the whole team is living in Stark Towers. Loki (for unknown reasons that will be probably not be explored here) is still on earth causing problems but a much smaller, more normal super villain scale. Like in the comics (which to be truthful, I have no read. In fact all I know about Avengers I got from the movies and some online research.)

And before I forget- I don't own anything about the avengers. I forgot to disclaim last time.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who read, reviewed, favorite and alerted after "Uncompromised." I hope to see many of you here again.

**Blackhawk Down**

The first clue she had that something was horribly wrong was Clint's arrow one inch away from her jugular.

When he swung his bow and arrow up to aim at her there was a strong chorus of No's from Stark and Rodgers who had been on the mission with him.

"Don't do it" Rodgers practically screamed. "She's on our team. You're friends!"

"She's my target" Clint said, his voice colder then she'd ever heard it. "The infamous Black Widow. I've been tracking you for months" he said, addressing Natasha but there was something so wrong with his tone and his face and there was no recognition in his eyes.

"Clint no" Natasha said, hands held up at her sides, showing her weaponless state, "That was six years ago. You didn't kill me you took me in-to SHEILD. We're partners now."

"It's true bud" Stark spoke up, reaching to lay a gentle hand on Clint's bow. Big mistake.

Clint turned the bow sideways and faster than Natasha's eyes could follow the arrow was un-knocked and Stark was on the floor an angry lash over his face.

Natasha took advantage of the momentary chaos to look at Rodgers'. One eyebrow quirked up, clearly asking what the hell had happened on what was supposed to be so simple a recon mission they hadn't even needed her to come.

Not that that was the real reason she'd done what she never, ever did and sat the mission out.

"Agent Barton" Rodgers said slowly, answering Natasha's unspoken question, "Appears to have lost his memory of the past six years."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here" Clint growled.

"Is this true?" Natasha asked, looking into Clint's eyes for some sign that this was a very poor taste and out of season April fool's joke, "You don't remember working with me?"

Clint looked confused and started to lower the arrow so it was pointed at her stomach instead of her throat. She knew that that the gesture meant he was reconsidering shooting her but it made Natasha's body fill with fear. If he shot her now she would live but it would injure her badly enough to…

She couldn't think about it. Not now. Not when he didn't even remember her.

"I remember you being my target" Clint said, staring into Natasha's eyes with the cold expression of a hunting bird of prey, "in Paris. Next thing I know I'm down on a rooftop and a man in a metal suit and Captain fucking America are asking me if I'm ok. So no- I don't remember you. But I don't work with partners."

Oh Clint. She could barely breathe. She was going to throw up.

She tried desperately not to hyperventilate and to calm down. Clint needed her now whether he knew it or not.

"That was six years ago" she said again, hands still raised by her head, "Fury told you to kill me. You made a different call and recruited me. He was furious and stuck you with me as a punishment but we worked so well together that the arrangement became permanent."

Clint stared into her eyes looking for the signs they had been trained to spot in a liar. Pupil dilation, sweaty forehead, trembling hands.

She forced herself to remain steady as a rock.

Slowly he lowered his bow so the arrow faced the ground and Natasha breathed a sigh of relief. "I believe you" he said, voice half awed. "Now what the fuck happened to my memory? How did I just lose six years?"

Six very important, vital years. Especially the last three.

"Some sort of spell is my guess" Stark said, slowly getting up off the floor. "But Banner will be able to tell more after we've run some tests on you and figure out if you remember anything at all from the past six years. We need to get you to medical."

"No!" Natasha said, "He won't go. Clint hates Doctors."

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here" Clint snapped. "And you" he turned from Stark back to Natasha, "how do you know that?"

"We're partners" she said, drawing out the word hoping that the euphemism would strike something inside of him. Make him remember her and remember that their partnership included more than just killing people together.

"I told you I don't do partners."

"You also said you believe me."

"I do." Clint's hand was grasped loosely around his bow, which was as relaxed as he got in a potential combat situation. He didn't trust her yet. "I don't know why but I do."

Sweet relief flooded Natasha's body. At least her Clint was in there somewhere.

Stark moved to put his hand on Clint's shoulder and then seemed to think better of it. "We need to get you down to medical big guy- the only way we're going to figure this out is with some brain scans. "

"Ok" Clint, who Natasha was starting to realize was locked firmly into his Hawkeye persona, looked at her, his expression all but unreadable but she could tell he wanted to ask her something. She saved him the trouble.

"There are no needles involved right Stark?"

"Jesus" Tony snickered, hand going up to cover his mouth, "don't tell me bird boy is scared of needles."

Clint whipped around to face Stark. "What did you call me?"

Tony threw up his hands to indicate surrender. "Sorry. Sorry." He grumbled, his eyes going to the floor, "yesterday you would have thought that was funny."

"Let's just get on with this" Natasha practically exploded, earning her a curious look from the man who no longer knew her or…

…cared about her.

"Ok" Clint said, tense but amiable. "You got a place where I can stash my bow?"

A sense of relief so pure it almost made her pass out surged through Natasha's body. He was trusting them enough to go unarmed. Not that it meant much because Clint was lethal with or without his weapons but it meant something very important that he was willing to put them down somewhere someone else knew where they were.

"I'll show you to your room" Rodgers offered quietly. Clint stared at him for a long minute, trying to assess the almost painfully earnest Captain's motives but nodded eventually.

"Let's get on with then" he said.

…..

Inconclusive.

The Brain scans were inconclusive. Fucking inconclusive. They couldn't tell what was wrong.

Natasha whirled around and sent an angry roundhouse kick into the punching bag dangling from the gym ceiling, sending the bag rocking wildly on its tether. The light from the floor to ceiling windows made it cast odd shadows in the large, mostly empty gym. The exercise was focusing but instead of calming her like it usually did it only made her angrier. Her favorite sparring partner wasn't here but locked up in medical-where he normally hated to be- and he didn't even want her with him. He'd only asked for Fury-to corroborate the story he'd been told and then for Coulson who he'd worked with for two years before Natasha had come along.

It had been the second time she'd had to tell Clint Coulson was dead- killed by an alien megalomaniac who had also attempted to take him for her for good.

And now somehow he had managed- Loki- to actually take Clint away from her. Removed the memory of every single moment they had spent together.

It all became too much and Natasha realized, appalled, that she was crying. Angrily she used her fists to brush the tears away from eyes but they wouldn't stop coming.

Stupid hormones.

Finally the burst of tears was too much to contain and Natasha sank to the gym mat lined floor and started to sob. She was so preoccupied with her own grief that she didn't even notice when another person came into the room.

"Oh Natasha" Pepper's voice came from the door five feet to her right and three feet above her from where Natasha was crying on her hands and knees. The older woman came over and knelt next to Natasha on the floor. "I heard what happened. I am so sorry. I know how close you are with Agent Barton."

"No you don't" Natasha couldn't stop crying. "No one does, not anymore. Just me now."

Pepper looked puzzled for a second then understanding dawned on her face.

"Natasha are you and Barton…lovers?"

Natasha nearly burst out laughing at that. It was so very polite the way Pepper said it. And ironic.

"No." She finally managed to stop the tears. "No we're not lovers. We're married."

Pepper appears to have been stunned into silence. Natasha's crying turns into laughter and once she starts she can't seem to stop it.

"That's not even the worst part" Natasha says, trying desperately to get a handle of her hysteria. "My husband of three years has no idea that I'm anything more than a target to him and that's not even the worst part."

"Natasha I don't…" Pepper seems at a loss for words. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea." She pauses and a strange look comes over her face, "does anyone know that you're married?"

"Coulson" Natasha picks herself up off the floor, "he was our witness. And he'd hold on to our wedding rings when we were on assignment."

"God. I don't know what to say. I can't even imagine- if Tony forgot all about me…"

Suddenly Natasha can't hold it in anymore. This great secret she was going to tell Clint when he got back from what was supposed to be a relatively harmless recon mission.

"I'm pregnant."

A/N: All right here we go! This was a little short but I guarantee further chapters will be much longer. It may be a few days before chapter two is up but I will write as fast as possible. In the meantime please, please review (I had over a thousand hits on "Uncompromised but only 11 reviews) it fuels me and makes me update faster and write better. So hit that blue button and let me know what you think- the good, bad and ugly.


	2. Forget Paris

**Authors' Note: **Hello to all my readers around the world! I love you all! And I'm most sorry for the delay in posting this-I had school but now it's over and I'll have much more time to write. A few brief notes. First, I am so extremely grateful to everyone who reviewed, alerted and favorited the first chapter of this story as well as Uncompromised (which I still recommend reading as there may be a reference to it later on.) I am awed and humbled by the response I have gotten so far. Keep up the good work folks and I'll keep up mine.

Second for the purposes of this story assume the following: the rainbow bridge that allows Thor to travel to Earth has been repaired. And all the avengers are living in the stark towers.

Third the rating of this story will be changing with the net chapter so keep an eye out. In fact if you think because of language it should already be M let me know.

Forth I've never been to Paris, let alone Notre Dame. Any mistakes about the floorplan of the building are just that, mistakes.

Without further ado…..

**BlackHawk Down Chapter two:**

**Forget Paris**

What no one knew (or ever said if they did-Coulson) was that Clint and Natasha had changed each other more than anything else. Before they met he was always Agent Barton or Hawkeye and she was always the Black Widow. They had no first names, no affection for others or themselves, no love. What is equally true is that the consequences of that meeting in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris had long reaching effects which rippled through not only their lives, but their very personalities. They became Natasha and Clint instead of only Hawkeye and the Black Widow. Like Pinocchio they became real human beings instead of only cold blooded assassins. Very few people could tell you of these changes because the people involved were as secretive as their profession made them but the changes were very real on a profound level.

Three people used to knows this. Only one person knows about it anymore.

…**.**

_There's a hushed silence about the Cathedral that is almost reverent. The few people who are worshiping are quite-mostly silent save for mumbled prayers. Outside it's pouring and the rain echoes off the arched roof in a gentle drone._

_According to SHEILDS info the Black Widow will be conducting a hit on an assistant priest tonight who has a long-and wrong- history with the parishes' children. It's not something Barton has the inclination to stop (he thinks even if someone ordered him to he might not do it) so instead he decides to watch having never seen her actually in action. _

_When no one is watching Barton scrambles up into the choir loft so he can overlook the confessional where he knows the hit is going to go down. That's how he would do it- it's just stereotypical enough to be poetic. A molester being taken out where he offers absolution of other people's sins. _

_He's quiet and manages to blend seamlessly into the stonework. It's one of his major skills- his ability to blend either into his surrounding or into a crowd. Barton is a handsome guy but when he doesn't want there to be there's nothing distinguishing about him. _

_He sinks into the shadows in the loft and waits. _

_She shows up three hours later. Wearing a square necked and pencil skirted gray dress she is the picture of Parisian style and respectability. There's even a tiny little hat in the ridiculous British style which covers only part of her flame bright hair. _

_He almost starts from his stone like perch when he sees her. He never has before- only a grainy surveillance photo that SHEILD was lucky enough to get. It didn't do her justice. _

_She's beautiful, he realizes. Purely in an objective fashion, of course. _

_Beautiful isn't even the right word. He's met women he has considered gorgeous before but to quote his father, her picture should be under the word in the dictionary. _

_He's fascinated by the way she moves, sinuously and gracefully. She glides from the dark patches in the cathedral into the light spaces. Clint knows from his time in the circus that she moves like a trained dancer. _

_When the time comes she slinks into the confessional and draws the curtain, waiting like a good catholic to confess her many sins. Barton waits above and watches for any sign of movement. There isn't any, but by the way she walks when she exits the booth he knows the job is done._

_Despite himself he's impressed. The hit was times perfectly- confessional isn't over yet but there's no line so it will be at least an hour before the body is discovered. And by then she'll be long gone. _

_Hawkeye swings himself out of the choir loft and climbs down the balcony legs. He finally has her in his sights and he won't be losing her tonight. _

….

The medical room in Stark Tower is cold and sterile and the air is so dry it tickles his throat.

Barton doesn't know what he's still doing here. Banner (who he knows by reputation as the Hulk but it more than slightly awed to meet in person and realize that not only does he work with the man on a daily basis but actually lives with him as well-last he heard the man/monster was busy hiding out in third world countries) hasn't been able to find anything wrong though they've run him through numerous CAT scan, MRI and PET scan machines. His brain is functioning normally and there are no injuries to it.

"Gotta be some kind of Asgardian hoodoo," Stark says. The man hasn't left him alone since they got back to the Avengers tower (what kind of name is Avengers anyway? Lame, that's what it is.) But his supposed partner, the Black Widow, is nowhere to seen.

Partnered with the Black Widow. Sparing the life of the Black Widow. It's too much to believe. Barton wasn't exactly SHEILD's golden boy when it came to following orders but when they told him someone had to die and he took the assignment then the person only had a limited number of days left.

And the Black Widow was one of SHEILD's worst offenders. Though nowhere near in brutality or pure offensiveness to justice as Somali warlords or genocidal dictators, she had a special skill set and used it indiscriminately to kill for whoever paid her. That made her an unknown quantity and thus a threat. He hadn't been exactly pleased when he was asked to kill her because he was never pleased to kill someone-more like stoically resigned that it had to happen- but this was one order he'd taken with a bit of gusto.

He didn't understand unscrupulous killers. He never had. For him each kill was a carefully weighed decision. Barton believed firmly that a person had to deserve to die. The Black Widow clearly believed that the qualification for death was a paycheck at the end of it.

He couldn't believe he hadn't killed her.

But clearly he hadn't because here she was six years later (a video call with Fury had put to rest any lingering doubts Barton had about the strange people around him pulling some sort of elaborate con designed to make him give up SHEILD- innovative interrogation techniques in other words) as alive-and beautiful-as ever.

There was no doubting the Widow's beauty. Blind men could see it. And Clint wasn't any sort of exception. She was perhaps the most beautiful women he had ever seen. But Clint had been all over the world and seen many beautiful sights. They didn't keep him from doing his job.

His last memories were of tracking the black widow for three months straight. She was elusive and tricky- molding and shifting from one identity to the next, frequently changing her hair color along with her name. It made her hard to track. She was a ghost practically, with no bad habits hobbies that called for repeated activities or any kind of normal schedule. She was impossibly skilled in the tradecraft of staying hidden in plain sight. That was ok though, because so was he.

By the time Barton caught up with her in Paris he had learned everything there was to know about the Black Widow from the places she had been to and gone from. He was tracking her but the trail had always grown cold by the time he showed up in the city she was living in and only by tracking deaths of prominent people with prices on their heads was he able to discern that she was still active and alive. Not that the Black Widow had ever publically claimed a kill. But he could tell. He had a feel for her now and knew which targets she'd take and when a seemingly natural cause of death would be been in reality a quick poison or unlucky accident.

Barton knew literally everything about the Black Widow. The way she took her coffee, the one yoga position she couldn't seem to master, the way she cleaned her guns. He was also well aware of-though it puzzled him to no end- of her habit of giving mass amounts of money to homeless beggars.

It was one of the many idosincerities about his target. She was deadly but compassionate. Careful beyond measure but cocky. Beyond beautiful in her person but cold and ugly in her soul.

Or so he assumed. They never met until today.

His firsts meeting with the Black Widow (that he remembered) and she begs him not to kill her. She looked scared actually Barton realized. Though not _of_ him.

Of something else he couldn't place.

Banner interrupts his musings. "Magic" he says with the evident disgust of a man of science. "I hate magic."

"Yeah this isn't even the fun kind" Stark says. Barton doesn't know why the billionaire has been hanging out with him for four hours. "You'd think Loki would be good for a de-aging ray or turning us into animals. Not causing us memory loss."

"Us?" Barton raises his eyebrows angrily. "This is only happening to me, Stark."

He doesn't know why but he feels like he lost something. Something more than the memories. It pulls on him like a phantom limb he can't quite find the shape of.

"You're an Avenger" Banner tells him, "what happens to you happens to us all. We're a team."

"Then why isn't the Widow here?" Barton voices what he's been wondering. She seemed so concerned about him earlier and is now so conspicuously absent. "Aren't we supposed to be partners?"

"Partners. Yeah right" Stark snorts.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Barton asks. He doesn't know why but Stark is rubbing him the wrong way. Probably because he tried to touch his bow. His baby.

"It means the two of you and most likely fuc-"

Stark is cut off abruptly by Banner. "What Tony means to say is that you and Natasha are very close."

Barton is instantly suspicious. And incredulous. Him close with the woman who kills for no more reason than money? He doesn't think so. It's not like he's some great patriot and before he was in the Army he got up to a lot of stuff in the circus but he was never like _her._

"Yeah because you're fucking" Stark snorts. At Banner's deeply put upon face he argues, "What? He doesn't remember liking her. It's not like I'm gonna get beat up for it. Blackhawk is down."

"No, but Natasha hurt you when she finds out. And what the hell did you just say?" Banner asks, face a mixture of confused and amused.

"They're Blackhawk-you know- like Brangelina or Beniffer. Black Widow and Hawkeye."

"Tony even for you that is-"

"I refuse to believe this." Barton broke in to the conversation happening between the two scientists, "she's a sociopath-"

"Yeah but so are you" Stark says, smirking.

"Why are you _here_?" Barton asks, more than genuinely curious. The man is not helping his mood.

"We're friends" Stark says, sounding offended.

"You think I'm a sociopath."

"Only in the very best way."

Rodgers enters the room from behind an imposing looking stack of machines. "Knock it off guys. We need to work on fixing this."

"I'm going to need Thor" Banner says. "If Loki caused this with magic and not a good old fashioned head injury then maybe Thor can fix it."

Barton knows who Thor is from studding the avenger's initiative files while waiting for the test results. Apparently he almost shot him once. And then spent a year guarding some kind of magic cube that Thor took back to his homework with him.

"I got the impression he's not nearly as proficient at magic as Loki is" Stark muses, "we need an expert."

"An expert in Asgardian magic? I think Thor is as good as we're gonna get."

"I thought you had no way of reaching him" Barton interjects- happy to prove he understands what is going on.

"There's some sort of magic guy on Asgard who's all seeing" Stark says with an expressive wave of his hands.

"His name is Heimdall" Rodgers says, "he's their gatekeeper. He keeps a watch on events on Earth and lets Thor know when he's needed."

"So Thunderpants should be showing up any minute now" Stark says, "Let's just hope he doesn't land on the helipad again. Those weird ass runes still won't come out."

…

"I was going to tell Clint today." He would have been ecstatically happy. She wasn't sure herself how she felt about the baby but Clint always wanted a family and she wanted Clint. Forever.

Pepper now looks well and truly shocked out of her mind. "I didn't even know the two of you were together much less trying to have a baby…"

"We weren't trying." Natasha almost snorts at the notion. The very idea of two highly trained SHEILD operatives thinking it was a good idea to have a baby when every bad guy on the planet knew who they were and would use it as leverage against them. "This was an accident. A good one but still…"

There were a couple of days on a mission in Peru last month when it hadn't been feasible to take her birth control pill- seeing as she was being purposely held captive in order to let SHEILD find a chemical weapons manufacture. When she'd been found after three days by Clint and a small SHEILD team and the place had been taken apart (she'd been especially happy to go after a couple of the more touchy feely guards) she'd been in the mood to celebrate and hadn't even thought about the potential consequences. They'd found a four star hotel that overlooked the port of Lima and used a condom that clearly hadn't worked and the rest was history.

Pepper clearly has no idea what to say and now Natasha feels guilty for confiding in her and putting her in this position. After a moment of awkward silence Pepper finally asks somewhat timidly, "Have you been to the doctor?"

"No, but I'm sure. I took three of those tests…" her voice trails off remembering the way she'd gone about buying and taking the test like it was a covert op. Wigs and fake credit cards had been involved. The whole charade carefully concocted so if there was nothing to tell she wouldn't get Clint's hopes up (she'd always known he wanted a family) and if there was it could be a surprise.

Well it looked like the surprise was on her.

"How about" Pepper spoke slowly, clearly not wanting to startle Natasha anymore, "We go down to medical and have you checked out. " Natasha started to protest but Pepper continued, "That way you can see Agent Barton also."

Natasha perked up at the idea of seeing Clint, who'd been locked away from her for four hours now but she couldn't allow a physical." I can't get checked out Pepper, the moment they know about the baby I won't be let back out in the field."

She had a feeling she was going to need field work to keep her sane.

"Should you be going out into the field? Risking something like that?"

"I can handle myself" Natasha felt herself going cold and feeling patronized.

"I know that" Pepper sounded amazingly steady. "You're more competent in a fight then anyone I know. But could you live with yourself if something happened to the baby?"

"I…" the mere thought of something happening to her child made Natasha clench her hands over her stomach to keep it safe. This may not have been planned but it was Clint's baby and at the moment all she had left of her husband. "No. I couldn't. That's why I didn't go with the guys yesterday. Maybe if I had…"

"No." Pepper said firmly, holding up one hand in a stop motion. "You can't blame yourself for this. Tony said Loki came out of nowhere and bashed Agent Barton in the head before anyone could do anything. In fact if you were there you might be injured now as well."

She couldn't decide if she was a horrible person for not knowing what would be worse- losing the baby or losing Clint.

"I know that" she says, because deep down somewhere she is aware of that what Pepper is saying is basically true, "rationally I know that. It doesn't make me feel any less guilty. I'm supposed to have Clint's back."

"When it was just you" Pepper says gently, carefully putting her hand on Natasha's shoulder. It didn't pay to physically touch an assassin against their will so all of the Avenger's and co (baring Tony) were very careful about casual contact between themselves and the SHEILD agents. "It's not anymore. There are six of you. And me. And we all have Clint's back."

"Yes but not the way I have it. He's my…" she actually stops before saying the word husband. They've been keeping this secret for so long she doesn't know how to be open about it.

Pepper seems to understand. "Your everything" she says, voice quiet. It reminds Natasha how long Pepper and Tony had spent locked in a romantic no man's land.

"Yes." Her everything indeed.

"How about we go down to medical and the two you just talk- no examination."

"You don't understand" Natasha nearly starts to cry again, "Clint despised me before we met. Absolutely hated me. I can't just walk up to him and say 'hi, I'm your wife!'"

"Well you have to tell him eventually. He has a right to know. Especially about the baby."

"I know" silent tears start to trickle down Natasha's face. "But I have no idea how to tell him."

…..

**A/N**: All right! Man it was hard writing dark Barton (as I've come to think of him) he has all these opinions and so few feelings. It made for a big switch up with how I usually see Blackhawk with Clint as the emotional one and Natasha being more grounded.

Stay tuned for these exciting developments in the next chapter: Natasha and Clint's first meeting, Thor's arrival and Natasha and Clint's first conversation since the memory loss!

I was totally overwhelmed with receiving thirty one reviews for the first chapter alone. Let's see if we can match that number for chapter two and I'll be writing even faster!

Hit that blue button!


	3. New and Found

**Author's note: **Hi there again! Many thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed, alerted and favorited. I love you all and you have no idea how happy your words make me. So please, if you aren't reviewing do so. It only takes a minute.

I've become totally obsessed with Jeremy Renner- especially with him and Scarlett Johansson's relationship. I know she has a boyfriend but in their interviews on YouTube (I recommend you check these out if you're into BlackHawk) they are so cute together. I'm willing to admit he seems like a total flirt but the way they look at each other can't be faked. It causes all these thoughts to go through my head….he he.

**Disclaimer**: if I owned it there would have been Blackhawk romance in the movie. And I'd make the actors get married. But I don't so reality sucks.

**Blackhawk Down:**

**Chapter three: New and Found**

Paris: November 3rd, 2006

_Natasha takes out the pedophile with a well-placed blow dart through the confession screen and walks out of the church as though unburdened of her sins. In a way she is because tonight's work was righteous work. _

_He reminded her of some of the men in the red room. Men who took advantage of the girls with no parents; forced to learn to fight and kill to survive. _

_She'd been hired by the father of a little girl that Father Girard had raped. Her benefactor was generally in the business of selling chemical weapons and has quite a few enemies that needed taking care of- but this was what he was passionate about. The police could put Girard in jail- she could put him in the ground. He considered it her audition- as though her reputation alone wasn't enough to get her the job. _

_She walked slowly and sedately from the cathedral and down the Seine, stopping in at Café to ditch her stupid hat and turn her dress inside out to the reversible vivid olive green side. _

_Fitzroy-her employer- lived in Paris's fanciest (and of course richest) district. But he couldn't be seen meeting with her so they were convening in the warehouse district. It wasn't the best part of town and in her posh outfit she was dreadfully out of place._

_Natasha strolled into the meeting like the czars of old- imperially. Fitzroy is standing in a corner surrounded by suspicious looking canisters and three burly guards with crew cuts. Overhead the cavernous ceiling yawns and the rain gently drums on the metal roof. _

"_It's done" she tells Fitzroy producing from her pocket the dart she plucked from Girard's dead neck. "The autopsy will confirm he had a heart attack- a very painful but silent heart attack."_

_Fitzroy takes the dart with a grin that shows no happiness. "I appreciate you doing this for me Ms. Romanoff."_

"_He deserved far worse" she replies. _

_She doesn't notice the slight movements overhead in the rafters. She does notice the bound and gagged man the three goons bring from the shadowy back of the warehouse and sit on a stool before her. _

"_This is Peter" Fitzroy says, "he had the audacity to sleep with my eldest daughter, Marissa. I was hoping you would give me some instruction on how to dissuade him from this happening again."_

…_.._

_Twenty feet above the action Hawkeye waits while the Black Widows stares at the kid-who can't be more than sixteen- whose shaking in his boots under a nasty looking bare bulb lamp. The whole set up looks like a stereotypical torture scene from a movie. Right down to the expressions of glee on the goons face and…_

…_expression of disgust and anger on the Black Widows. _

_Hun. That's odd. He would have thought she enjoyed this sort of thing. _

_Instead of taking Fitzroy up on his offer to teach him something (something most in the business would have jumped at- assassins are natural show offs) the widow goes stone still. He can see her practically vibrating with anger from where he's perched. _

"_I don't do things like this" he hears her say. "Sorry."_

"_My dear Natasha" Fitzroy says amiably, "of course you will do this thing for me." Behind him the three goons form a line and cross their arms as one. _

"_No, I won't." she says, crossing her arms over her chest. Voice totally steady._

_Barton admires the fact that she's taking a stand against a supposedly superior force (he doubts the superior part very much) regardless of her reasons. The Black Widow gets more and more fascinating the more time he spends watching her. _

_Fitzroy's smile abruptly downshifts-changing so fast it's like his face is really a TV screen or something. _

_The Black Widow-Natasha Romanoff is her name-is clearly not pleased. She walks forward to the young man-Peter- and takes his chin in her hand. _

"_I'm going to get you out of here" she says in French. _

_A switch flips in Barton's head. It appears she's human after all-this supposed killing machine. Human is something he can work with. Human is something he doesn't want to take out of the world-he spends too much time already with people who are half and quarter human only- the rest having been drained by the grizzly work of the intelligence community. No one he kills is human anymore. _

_Suddenly the half-assed desire to not kill someone so beautiful turns into a full-fledged plan to get someone who is very highly skilled-and only happens to be beautiful- on his side. As much as there are sides in this business. _

_He's needed a partner for a while anyway. No one can do work like this alone forever. Some missions just call for more than one person. And as much as he's avoided those missions his whole life he can't forever. Not if he wants to be in thick of things-which is after all were he was born to be. And the only person he marginally trusts (Coulson) isn't much for the field work. _

_Besides the call to take the boy out of the situation and flip Fitzroy off is one he would easily make. And it's a little stupid. He likes that. He likes __**her**__ he realizes. From her style in the confessional hit to her quiet confidence and her assured morality that torturing this boy who hasn't done anything is wrong. _

_His sudden decision doesn't remove his attention from the situation below. The goons are now moving towards the widow with purpose, swinging their meaty arms in the posture of someone who obviously wants to get into a fight._

_It's as good a time as any to introduce himself he decides. _

_Barton pulls out his collapsible bow and extends it. The audible snap is clearly not heard below so before anyone even knows he's there goons 1 and 2 have arrows protruding from their chests._

…_.._

_Natasha strangles the first guard with a well-placed thigh coke and goes to take down the other two when she notices them lying on the ground, long black-are those arrow shafts?-coming from their torsos. _

_Involuntarily she looks up. That's when she sees him, high in the rafters a man about ten years older than her with dark blond hair offering a grim smile and a salute. She stares back and he jerks his head in the direction of the kid and then to the doorway. "I'll cover you" he mouths in English. _

_She doesn't have time not to trust him. Besides he took out two of the guards. That indicates he's on her side. If that changes-well she'll deal with that when she has to. _

_At first she doesn't know what he's talking about, covering her, there's only Fitzroy left and she knows from the cut of his suit that he has nowhere to conceal a gun. Then she sees fifteen or more armed men rushing into the room from the back-some wearing lab coats and carrying nasty looking syringes and canisters and some wearing tactical gear and carrying Uzis. _

_She pulls her gun from where it's been hiding in her relatively tiny dress and fires off five shots into the first three men advancing on her position. Arrows rain down and catch another five of them-including Fitzroy himself- and she takes advantage of the momentarily distracted bunch to grab the teenager from his chair, slice through the bonds tying his ankles and grab him and high tail it the door. Overhead antiquated death rains down and she wonders seriously about this man who's using a bow and arrow in the 21__st__ century. _

_In the space of two minutes she's out the door and down the alley leading to a more brightly lit but still deserted street. The kid stumbles along beside her and she gets off another five shots and silently thanks herself for taking the glock with the 15 ammo clip with her today even though it's bulky and harder to hide in a dress._

_A sudden thump beside her signals the arrival of the archer onto the ground. He looks at her with clear stormy blue eyes; slings his bow over his back, pulls out a berretta 9mm and takes one of the boy's arms so his weight isn't solely resting on her. _

"_Let's go" he says._

_They manage to weave through Paris's labyrinthine streets, picking off more guards as they go and dodging gunfire themselves. The kid isn't so lucky and gets hit in the arm; he falls to his knees and the man harshly yanks him back up by the same arm that's just been wounded. _

"_We don't have time" he says in excellent French, "we need to keep moving to keep you alive."_

_They come to a boxed in end of an ally. It's a shooting gallery. The man swears under his breath (from his choice of curses and lack of accent she can tell he's American now and briefly wonders if he's the one who's been following her for three months) and points to a spot of cover behind a dumpster. She drags the kid back there as he proceeds to scale the sheer brick walls with no apparent effort and perch on the second story rooftop. _

"_Why are you doing this?" she yells in the calm before the storm in the moments before the guards have caught up to them._

"_To be honest I was supposed to kill you" he answers back, drawing back his bow and nocking an arrow, "but I think you'd make a better asset."_

"_Who do you work for?" she asks, curious about this man who probably had any number of opportunities today to kill her and didn't take a single one._

_He fires off three arrows and three guards fall at the entrance to the kill box. "SHEILD."_

_Great. Another American alphabet soup agency- she doesn't need another one on her back. _

"_Never heard of it." Three bullets and she reloads her only spare clip._

"_You wouldn't have" he says back, taking down another two men. She gets the last one straight between the eyes, the bullet he was firing simultaneously smacking into the wall behind her an inch from her head. _

_She looks around at the stack of dead bodies congesting the entrance to the alley. Had she been alone she might be dead now-she hadn't allowed for the possibility that Fitzroy might be well backed up. She hadn't had enough bullets. The backup is nice she decides, even if she doesn't really know if she can trust it. _

"_Let's talk" she says, curious enough to least hear the mystery man's offer. _

"_Excellent" the man says with another grim smile (his face doesn't seem like it can do any other kind which is a shame because it's a __**nice**__ face) "we'll just drop the kid at the hospital first."_

"_I'm Agent Barton by the way" he adds as an afterthought. _

"_Natasha Romanoff" she offers._

_Barton bens down and grabs one of the syringes a lab coat was waving around and takes a vile out of his tack vest and flushes the liquid into it. He puts the vile back carefully in a pocket near his left hand. _

_At her curious glance he says he has to show something to his boss to prove this mission isn't a total loss. _

…_._

_They drop the kid at a local hospital in the ambulance bay when no one is looking. It wasn't hard at all to get him to keep his mouth shut about meeting them. Then they go back to her hotel and order room service. It's a strangely intimate situation Barton realizes, being in combat with someone else, and something he hasn't experienced since leaving the Rangers. _

_He tells her about SHEILD. About second chances and humanity and not hating yourself every day. He tells her she'd never be alone in another situation like the one tonight. _

"_Would I be working with you?" she asks; her expression unchanging during his whole long spiel (Barton is a huge fan of the Yiddish language. Especially the curses.)_

"_Maybe" he says, knowing if he does manage to bring her in Fury won't be happy enough to take what he wants into consideration, "but if you don't come with me I can guarantee I'll have to kill you eventually."_

"_So it's not really a choice" her face goes cold. _

_He has the feeling this woman has never had a choice in her life. Especially not about what she does and who she is. _

"_Of course it's a choice" he says, sipping the rich cappuccino they ordered out of tiny porcelain cups while sitting in her suits living room, "you can come and repent and change your ways-all the crap- or you can stay as you are and probably be dead in a year because you have no support system."_

_He can tell by her face she's thinking it over. _

"_We have great dental" he says helpfully. _

….

New York: December 2nd 2012

After doing every medical test they could possibly think of Barton was finally released from medical and allowed to go to his floor of the Stark/avengers tower. What he found there surprised him.

"Widow" he acknowledges the red haired, red eyed woman who was curled up on a leather chaise lounge in the common room of the circular floor. Oddly enough she looks like she's been crying.

"Cli-Agent Barton" she says back, nodding her head at him. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine. Frustrated but fine." Barton watches as she gracefully unfolds herself from her position and steps towards him. He wants to step back and put more space between them but Clint Barton doesn't show fear. Besides, despite his weaponless state, he's not afraid.

That in and of itself is a little strange. Fear is how he gets things done. If he's afraid of something he'll do it so he's no longer afraid. Bravery is not the absence of fear after all, but the courage to act in the face of it. From her reputation alone he thinks the Widow is a person to be feared. From watching the aftermath of her work for three months straight he knows she is to be feared. He should at least be wary of her.

Instead he is almost…comfortable around her. Like his natural state is somewhere in her orbit.

"We share this floor" she volunteers, looking around her at the attached living room/kitchen area. From what he can see of it the space is large and open, filled with comfortable looking furniture- the walls painted a soothing blue. "Everyone else has their own floor but Tony seemed to think this was appropriate. Something about matching sets. Besides we're used to a lot less on the hellicarrier."

"I do remember that much."

The Black Widow looked amazingly curious- and sad he realized. "When exactly does your memory cut out?" she asked.

Barton had to concentrate for a moment to find the last concrete memories he had before the great black mass that was the past six and a half years. "Getting intel that you were going to take down a child molesting priest at Notre Dame and heading there to observe. But it all kind of stops just as I'm getting to the cathedral doors." Fury had verified enough of their working relationship that he feels it's acceptable to be honest with her.

Something about what he said brought the Widow to her feet. Angrily she started to pace and ran her hands through her shoulder length cherry red hair.

"God dam you Loki" she muttered just loud enough for him to hear. "You just had to go and prove you could do it didn't you?"

"Do what?" Barton asked, getting angry himself. He didn't like this…this supposed closeness he felt with this woman. The rage she was emanating about his condition set his teeth on edge. There was no reason for her to be so attached to him that his amnesia affected her so much.

She paused, staring at him, and took several deep breaths. For several long moments they just stared at each other, both refusing to blink.

"Take you away from me" she said finally, voice dripping with sorrow.

Barton almost staggered backwards. The words were ambivalent enough that he could have read almost anything into them but there was no mistaking her tone.

Stark hadn't been bullshitting him. This woman- this unscrupulous, conscienceless killing machine, was someone he was_ involved_ with.

Jesus fucking Christ.

…

Try though she might Natasha was unable to force herself to go talk to Clint in medical. There he was surrounded by the rest of the earth bound team members and already on edge because aside from completely flat land where there was no place to perch and observe from it was it his least favorite place in the world. It seemed like a much better alternative to wait until he was on their floor-which might have some familiarity to it- before attempting to tell him about their relationship.

She was dreading it like nothing else.

She remembered vividly the three months she'd been aware of some shadowy American force stalking her every move. She's been more careful then then she'd ever been in her life and it still hadn't been enough- Clint had caught up to her in the end.

And though the emotion was gone by the first time they spoke she knew that Clint had thought her the worst kind of scrum before they met. Interesting, beautiful scum but scum all the same.

She's never been totally sure what caused the change-over in his feelings towards her. He'd tried to explain it once- something about how he saw she had a sense of justice and morals when previously he thought she had none.

"You weren't this completely cold blooded killer like I thought you were" he'd told her the first night they shared a bed (long before they actually had sex), "I could tell there was something about you that was as resigned as I was to the work that we do."

But any positive feelings Clint had towards her had been developed the first time they actually met face to face- on a cold night in Paris when she hadn't even know she was being followed. And based on what he just told her, Loki had deliberately removed all his actual memories of her starting on the very day they met.

Looked like someone was holding a serious grudge about his magic portal being closed down.

It was just the thing to do to hurt her the most. Loki had taken Clint away from in the most complete way.

She thought maybe it would almost hurt less if he was dead. Then she mentally smacked herself for thinking it.

Clint was just staring at her, eyes wide, expression verging on horror. She remembered what he was like when they first met- closed down, unemotional, professional in a cold way. So very different from her loving, funny, warm best friend and husband. It had taken time but eventually when they opened up to each other the man she had known only as Agent Barton had been replaced with Clint.

Well, Clint was clearly gone. And Agent Barton was back.

"What do you mean 'take you away from me'?" Clint asks. "Stark seems to think the two of us are screwing- is that true?"

Natasha couldn't keep herself from wincing. Frantically she tried to think of the best way to answer the question. She'd determined while waiting for him to get back from medical that the only way to make it through this was to be honest with him but she had no idea how to tell a man who hated her in a disinterested way that they were married and about to be parents.

"Well?" He stared at her, eyes boring into her skull. "Are we some kind of fuck buddies?"

That snapped her right out of it. "No, no we're not."

Clint blew out a sigh of relief. "Thank god. I knew Stark didn't know what he was talking about."

"No he doesn't" Natasha agreed, trying to ignore the hurt she felt at his obvious relief in thinking they weren't involved. "We're married."

Clint's eyes opened so wide she thought they might pop out of his head. "What?"

Natasha took a deep breath and counted to ten before continuing. "We're married. Have been for three and half years."

….

"I don't…I don't believe you." Barton was somewhat proud of himself for actually managing to get words out his mouth. Married? Him? To her? It just wasn't possible-was it?

The women before him was outwardly calm but her eyes reflected a world of hurt and seeing that made him feel an unexpected twinge of guilt. He didn't know why- he didn't owe her anything.

"It's quite true I can assure you."

"Prove it."

"I…" Romanoff looked around desperately, her eyes landing on the chaise she had just been seated on. "I can't prove it. We got married under fake names and the only person there was Coulson. No one else even knew about it. I don't even have our wedding rings because he was holding on to them when he died and it's not like I can walk up to Fury and say that there's something in his stuff that belongs to you and me."

Barton tapped his foot angrily on the white silk carpeting. He hasn't even begun to process that Coulson is dead yet- her brining him up is not helping his mood. "Why should I believe you then?"

"Because I know EVERYTHING about you" the widow continued, impassioned. "You have a mole the shape of a squid on your left knee. After your parents died in a car crash you grew up in the Carson Carnival of Travelling Wonders and after you caught the swordsman embezzling you had a falling out with your brother Barney and-"

"You could have picked this up reading my file-"

"You hate needles" she continued, staring his straight in the eye, "your bow's name is Rosie and your relationship with her verges on being creepy, you're very superstitious and have a lucky wrist guard and if you don't wear it on the first day of every mission you're convinced something will go wrong, you see better from a distance and love to perch in high up places but contrary to popular opinion you don't have a nest and…"

"This isn't exactly specialized information Romanoff. And it definitely doesn't prove we're married."

"You only sleep on your left side" she continued, voice deadly calm now. "You grit your teeth when you come. You've always secretly wanted a family and…" she stopped talking and shut her mouth, lips pursing into a thin line. "And when you have nightmares they're always about the night your parents died. And I know for a fact you'd never spent the whole night with a woman before you started sleeping with me."

She had him there. It was completely true. Though he liked women and sex he'd never met a women he trusted enough to relax completely around. It wasn't so much that he didn't want to actually sleep with them but that he couldn't make himself do it. It was a weakness. He didn't like those.

Barton forced himself to stare into the widow's eyes. She stared right back her beautiful glass green eyes rimmed with red and dark circles. They didn't waver.

For some reason he couldn't explain at all he wanted to believe her. It wasn't that he wanted what she said to be true so much as it seemed his natural inclination was to trust this woman. And he wanted so badly to trust someone- there was no one left now that Coulson was gone.

What. The. Fuck. He didn't trust anyone. Except for Colson- most of the time. He trusted Fury as far as he could throw him and knew he would order him around and lie to him if needed.

But trusting this woman enough to actually sleep with her…

That was big.

Before she could blink he reached out and grabbed her wrist, sliding him pointer finger over her pulse point. Staring into her eyes he asked her a question.

"What is our relationship?"

She clearly knew what he was doing. "We're married."

According to the poor man's lie detector test she was telling the truth.

…

Clint was holding onto her wrist hard enough to make the skin white from lack of blood flow. Natasha jiggled it to make him let it go and gently rubbed it with her other hand.

Clint just stared back at her, face totally unreadable. Slowly he turned away from her and went to sit on the coach before the big screen TV they barely ever used. Movie night usually took place on the main level (where Tony and Pepper lived) and involved all the earthbound avengers.

She carefully sat back down on the chaise never moving her eyes from her husband.

"What-what do I call you?" Clint asked. He was now looking at her in a decidedly less unfriendly way. He looked in fact bewildered, lost.

"What do you mean?"

"I can't just call you Widow" he said, turning to look at her, "or Romanoff. But Natasha doesn't seem quite right in my head. So what do I call you?"

Her heart actually skipped a beat. It seemed he remembered _something_ at least. "What don't you call me? You call me Nat or Tasha or Tash. Sometimes Widow, if we're on a mission. But you're right- you don't call me Natasha- not unless something serious is going down."

Clint nodded, face serious. There was a little wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. "You don't seem like the kind of person who does nicknames."

Natasha smiled. "I'm not- but you wore me down."

Clint dropped his head into his hands. "I don't know how to handle this" he paused and very slowly and carefully said, "Nat. It was strange enough losing my memory and finding out you and I work together but learning that we're married? It's too much."

It was then she knew she couldn't tell him about the baby. It wasn't only that they were both overwhelmed and she was grieving for a man who might as well be dead. Clint would have been overjoyed at her news- concerned with how to keep the baby safe yes- but mostly overjoyed. She couldn't handle giving this news to a man who would only see it as an additional burden.

Her news would have to keep.

Hopefully not for too long.

"I know it's too much" she says, reaching for Clint's hand only to realize at the last second she can't actually take it. He may believe her but he obviously doesn't trust her yet. "I moved out of our room- there are two bedrooms on this floor we just don't use one of them- and I'll just give you some space until your memory comes back. And in the meantime maybe we can learn to be…to be friends again. I know you think that I'm a psychopath or a sadist but I'm not. The way you feel about me now-well it had changed to something else by the time we actually met."

"Which was when?" he asks.

"About four hours after your memory cuts out. I think what Loki did to you was specifically designed to affect you and me."

"I read the file on the Manhattan incident" Clint says, looking troubled, "I know what Loki did to me, what he had me do. I can understand someone like him wanting to hurt someone who escaped his spell but why does he hate you?"

Natasha wants to cry suddenly and battles the tears that are trying to crawl up her tear ducts. He doesn't see that by doing this it's hurting him just as much as it's hurting her.

"I closed down the portal that kept his army from coming to earth."

Clint blows out a gust of air. "Yeah-that would do it."

For a moment both of them become silent.

"What if" he looks up at her, gray- blue eyes appearing through thick blond lashes, "what if it doesn't come back?"

"It has too" she says firmly, hands grabbing onto her knees hard. "Thor may have a way to bring it back anyway- so you could be all fine soon after he gets here."

Clint sighs hard, which is as close as he gets to crying.

"It just has too" she whispers to herself.

…..

On the roof of the Stark tower a beam of intense rainbow light rains down from the heavens. Tony and Banner gaze on awestruck from a not so safe distance and watch eagerly as only scientists observing a genuine miracle of totally alien technology can. The light show stops as abruptly as it started and Thor's large well-muscled form can be seen in the flash of floaters that are illuminating both of their eyelids.

"My friends!" Thor bounds over like an over exuberant puppy and grabs both Tony and Bruce in a two handed, three person bear hug. Tony wheezes.

"You're kind of crushing my arc reactor there big guy."

Thor frowns. "I apologize friend Stark."

Bruce glares at Tony. It's not nice to play with Thor- he doesn't understand earth idioms at all. "It's ok" he says, answering for his friend, "We're just glad you're hear."

"I too am glad to have returned though saddened about the reason for my arrival. It is a most grievous thing my brother has done."

"How can you still call him your brother?" Tony asks, genuinely curious about the relationship between the two demi gods.

"Loki has become confused and malicious" Thor sighs, "but he will always be my brother. It is simply for me to right what he has wronged."

"Well this is a big wrong to right" Bruce explains, "We'll get started tomorrow after you and Barton have had some time to sleep."

"Sleep would be most welcome" Thor actually sways on his feet. "Traveling by bi-frost is extremely tiring."

"All right then" Tony rubs his hands together, "tomorrow operation fix Barton commences."

…..

**A/N:** Stay tuned for these exciting developments next time: Barton and Romanoff's first mission together, Thor's attempt to fix things and Clint's dream of an event he no longer remembers. Please remember to hit that blue button and review! Oh and if you can spot the Jeremy Renner quote (its paraphrased a little) I'll give you a cookie!

V


	4. The year of getting to know us part one

**Author's Note:** Hi there everyone! I am so sorry for the long absence! For a while I was just uninspired and then I lost my password and then I had heavy dental problems and was kind of on the drugged side. But I'm back and you can expect regular chapters from now on. Especially since this chapter had to be cut in two due to length.

You may have noticed the first fic in this 'verse, "Uncompromised" was taken down because the puritanical people who run things around here though an M rating wasn't enough of a warning about it. So I although I re-posted I'm being very, very careful about smut. So fair warning-things get steamy in this chapter.

Also I made up some Asgardian words. I don't know Norse or much about their mythology to be honest. So bear with me please. Now on to the fic!

**BlackHawk Down: The year of getting to know us Part one**

**Hellicarrier: November 2006-Febuary 2007**

_This new dynamic couldn't be any weirder, she decides. _

_For one thing her new base of operations (not that she really had an old one-it was more of mobile command center made up of her brain) is a floating air craft carrier. Only it floats in the sky, not on the ocean. Most of the time. Her new boss has one eye and still manages to have the most intimidating stare she's ever seen. She's afraid of him. Even Barton she thinks is afraid of him. _

_Then there's agent Barton. The oh so congenial and gentlemanly man who helped her kill more than two dozen men to save her life and the life for a teenage boy probably not worth saving and then talked to her over tea and cookies (well, coffee and scotch really) about changing her life like he was a college recruiter. _

_She doesn't know anything about him at first but she knows he's more of a sniper than a fighter and she knows that means unlimited patience and the ability to make split second life or death decisions. _

_She is not a sniper which means she isn't patient by any means and the first two days of sitting in a bare cell waiting for the mysterious director of the agency to make a decision as to her fate is nerve-wracking. She's fairly sure that Barton will be ordered to kill her again and then she might have to kill him-something she's prepared to do but will regret seeing as she owes him her life for helping her out in the firefight in Paris. _

_She's just counted every dot in every panel of the ceiling when her cell door swings open and agent Barton walks in, accompanied by a tall black man wearing an eye patch. _

_It's like everyone around here thinks they're living in the 17__th__ century she swears. Bows and arrows and eye patches-it's almost laughable. _

"_I'm Commander Fury" the black man says, his voice deep and she can tell by the inflection-prone to both laughter and heavy swearing. "I run this place."_

"_Nice to meet you" she says, every inch as polite as the Red Room charm teachers would have wanted. _

"_Barton here tells me you'd make an incredible asset. That's pretty high praise from him."_

"_I wouldn't know about that" she says modestly. _

_In the corner Barton snorts, obviously amused. _

"_Good. If that's the case then Barton, kill her."_

"_Sorry sir" Barton says, leaning against the gray cell wall and crossing his arms over his chest, "can't kill a girl for being modest."_

"_What the hell did you do to my best man Romanov?" Natasha startles momentarily because Fury says her name with the Russian pronunciation. _

"_Nothing" she says, because honestly she has no idea why Barton decided to save her life. He would have been fine up there in those rafters and she would have been taken down in a 20 to 1 fight. She can tell by Barton's eyes and the way he moves and those ridiculously accurate arrows he shot that he's as good as she is at this business- and you don't get good at being an assassin by sparing people's lives. Much less saving them. _

"_Well" Fury says, looking highly displeased, "the point is you're here and you're alive and apparently willing to work with us-is that true?"_

_She nods. She doesn't know exactly why but Barton's clichéd talk about redemption (he knew it was a cliché as he was saying it to she could tell he was a moment away from rolling his eyes at all times) struck a chord with her but it did. The idea of wiping out some of the red in her ledger is an incredibly appealing thought. _

"_Then I'm sticking the two of you together for the time being" Fury glares and her and then turns his stare on Barton, "that should teach you some lessons about bringing strays home. Both of you are going to go through new agent training before you're let out in the field again."_

"_Sir I don't really think that's necessary-" Barton looks irritated. It's not a look Natasha would like trained on her. _

"_You're dam right its necessary! Until two days ago this woman was on our to do list-now you just want me to turn around and throw her out in the field? It's not gonna happen. And you could apparently use a refresher course on agent protocol anyway."_

_Barton yes sirs with a resigned face. And this is how their partnership starts. _

…_.._

_One of the first things she does is steal his file and get to know it intimately. It startles her to learn he is the infamous Hawkeye (even if she's never heard of SHEILD-they're too hush-hush apparently for someone on the outskirts of the intelligence community to know about them -though she's sure the red room knew and never bothered to inform her- she's heard of him) apparently the best marksman ever to come out of the US of A. She still doesn't get the thing with the bow (it must be easier to use a gun surely?) but it doesn't seem to affect his performance at all so she mentally lets it go. _

_He's fourteen years older than her not ten like she initially thought. But then she's young for this game-only twenty one and already killing for seven years. He became partially deaf in an explosion caused by the accidental detonation of one of his explosive arrows but SHEILD fixed him up with an experimental surgery. The hearing loss only lasted three months but he learned to sign and read lips anyway. And his eyesight is amazing-far better than twenty/twenty. It lets him see from far off distances without the use of a sniper scope-which is good she thinks because there's nowhere to put one on a bow. His first name is Clinton but she think he'd probably go by Clint. He never asks her to call her that so she doesn't ask him to call her Natasha. Apparently they're going to be nice and formal with each other. _

_They go through new agent training together which is like boot camp only there's a chance you might die during it. SHEILD doesn't coddle its agents so its head first in the deep water end of the pool. _

_Most of what they do Natasha knows already-and it's clear Barton does. She learns from the hushed whispers of the other new agents (most of whom are like Hawkeye groupies-if Barton was so inclined he could have a different young attractive woman for company every night for a week) that Barton is SHEILDS top agent- the go got man for any tough undercover op and the absolute only option for any kind of difficult assassination. It's clear from what she learn that he has never failed to complete to an order (though she learns he doesn't always follow them to the letter) until he came back from Paris with her trailing behind him in handcuffs instead of in a body bag. _

_It's absolutely, positively, one hundred percent crystal clear that most of SHEILD believes he spared her life because he thought she'd make a good fuck. _

_She doesn't mind the gossip. She was patently surprised in Paris when it was clear that he didn't expect her to sleep with him and frankly she's been waiting for him to take an opening and suggest that because she owes him her life she could pay the debt back with her body. _

_It's not something she'd be totally opposed to-he's a nice looking man Barton. Handsome face, the great posture of a military man and a pair of absolutely drool worthy arms that are carved and sculpted from years of archery practice. She could sleep with him and have it be the most amazing experience of his life and consider them squared. _

_Only she gets the impression from the way Barton acts and moves and talks-that that isn't something he wants. _

_He wants something from her she knows or he never would have spared her. Snipers always have reason for doing what they do. She just doesn't know what it is. _

_So they train. Pathetic gun cleaning drills and hand to hand combat maneuvers and running through how to use SHEILDS com systems and computers. There's even a kind of foreign affairs special briefing that keeps them up to date on the most volatile situations in the world that they may be called in to deal with. _

_It's all a colossal waste of her time but she endures it without complaint until one day a man named Agent Coulson shows up. _

…

_Coulson comes back from a six week posting in the Sudan right when new agent training is wrapping up and Natasha and Barton are getting prepared to go into the field for the first time._

_Barton knows he should have been bored out of his mind for the last month and a half but he's been spider watching and that is nothing short of fascinating. The Black Widow is an amazing creature that he doesn't understand her at all. _

_Coulson is his one friend at SHEILD (for some reason he just doesn't get along well with the other agents) and usually it's a little tough on Barton when they're on separate assignments for long periods. He hasn't seen him for six months now, because first he was infiltrating a biological weapons group and then he spent three months tracking down Romanoff. _

_He doesn't think of her as Natasha. It's too personal. He needs a partner-not a friend. And she's so cold it almost seems like she doesn't have a first name. _

_Well-not cold exactly. More like she's just never been exposed to how normal people act and think and talk. She's so controlled-so very controlled. He's never met a person who is wound any tighter than she is. _

_They've just gotten there first assignment when Coulson shows up. He'd been expecting taking down a human trafficking ring or a drug lord or maybe a den of pirates-something violent and brutal that lacked any kind of undercover finesse. The kind of thing that would showcase all of the Black Widow's skills with weaponry without getting into the tricky issues of how they have no clue about her loyalties yet. _

_Instead they're being sent to suburbia. Two dwellers of just out of town living (a dentists and his homemaker wife) are suspected of smuggling plutonium. The good kind that you could make a backpack nuke with. Something any suicide bomber would die to have (not the best analogy but still…)_

_Barton is just reading and re-reading his new cover (Jeremy Fusco, carpenter and high end house flipper-which is perfect considering the targets-name of Grant-want work done on their ranch house) when Coulson walks into his office. _

_Barton's office is small and tiny and doesn't even have a window and he spends no time there if he can help it. But Romanoff has uncovered most of his hiding places around the hellicarrier and now occupies them with the vicious leave me alone vibes she outputs so he has been relegated to hiding in his office. _

"_You know this is the last place I expected to find you" Coulson says, appearing from somewhere behind Barton by doing his inexplicable ninja thing. For a suit Coulson is surprisingly good at the spy stuff._

"_Jesus Phil doesn't do that" Barton exaggerates his surprise by putting his hand over his heart. Phil is the only person in the world who can sneak up on him. _

"_Sorry" the older man's tone indicated he was not in fact, apologetic. "I'm here to supervise you and the new agent Romanoff in the field._

_Barton stood up, knocking over a pile of semi-important documents as he did so. Training reports on new agents mostly as he was acting as de-facto instructor in the new agent course he was forced to take._

"_This assignment is no good Phil" he says, struggling to fix the stack of papers, "the age difference is too big for anyone to believe we're a couple."_

"_It'll work" Coulson says, short on words as always, "she looks older than she is, and you look younger. No one will have a hard time believing it. Besides you saved her life-that's the kind of bond people can see."_

"_Maybe" Barton broods. Saving Romanoff's life wasn't really a question-not after what he saw in that warehouse. But that doesn't mean he trusts her. And it sure doesn't mean he wants to live in small house (compared to the hellicarrier) in suburbia with her for an untold amount of time. _

"_Not maybe. It'll work. And frankly we need to know if she's any good for deep cover as opposed to just hits."_

"_All right" Barton laces his fingers behind his head and sighs. He doesn't like it but he doesn't like half the missions he goes on and he still has to do it. "You meet her yet?"_

"_No." Barton may be imagining it but even Coulson sounds just a little bit afraid. A 21 year old assassin with a record as good and as long as Barton's when he's fourteen years her senior is a little intimidating. Even for Coulson. "I thought maybe you could make that happen."_

….

**December 3****rd****, 2012**

Natasha manages to sleep for two hours that night despite the heavy presence of –well-everything weighing on her mind. Clint's memory loss. The baby. Thor's potential cure. The pregnancy must be exhausting her and snapping her strength because normally under this kind of stress she'd be up and pacing until something was resolved. Like the time Clint was almost killed four years ago or during his time with Loki.

Before the sun is up she's sitting in their floors common room, curled up in a large armchair with her feet tucked under her and a cup of (decaf-this no caffeine thing really sucks) tea in her hand. Waiting.

Clint's call sign isn't just a reference to his unusually good sight and accuracy-he also tends to be up with the birds, long before any sane person wants to be awake. Part of it's a throwback to his time with the circus and the military and part of it's just his natural rhythm. On weekdays anyway. Weekends are a different story and then he has to be pried out of bed.

But today is a Monday. She checks her watch. Any minute now.

The door to the room they always used to share (sleeping in the spare bedroom, without his familiar scent and arms surrounding her had been part of the reason for her insomnia the night before) clicks open and Clint walks out, looking more awake and aware than anyone has a right to be at 4:30 in the morning.

He stops at the end of the hallway-the best tactical position near the bedroom, close to the three exits and no way to get behind him- and scans the room. He seems surprised to see her there.

"Wido-I mean Nat. Good morning." The greeting is cautious but a hell of a lot more friendly than it had been the night before.

"Good morning Agent Barton" Natasha says, setting down her tea and standing and gently stretching. She doesn't miss the way his eyes travel up and down her body. The sensation of him watching her, checking for harm or just looking because he loved her is a familiar one and she means to enjoy it when she can.

Clint notices her noticing him staring and blushes slightly. "Sorry: he says, "We're teammates that wasn't appropriate-"

"We're married Clint" she says, using his first name for the first time since this whole mess started, "you can look as much as you like."

And just like that she can literally see the moment when it becomes an iron clad fact in his head that they've had sex.

She supposed he knew it intellectually before but now it's hitting him that their bodies had been together, naked, joined. As physically close to each other as two humans can get.

His stanch changes to something she recognizes as arousal and she feels an answering wave run through her body. Her breasts begin to tingle and she can feel wetness seeping out of her. Stupid pregnancy hormones. Now is not the time.

They stare at each other for what feels like hours, neither one of them making a move towards the other, both of them wanting to. Natasha is just about to buckle down and submit to her baser functions when the elevator door dings open and a demigod bursts through.

Damm. But they had agreed last night to start early.

"My Friends!" Thor booms, reaching for Clint to take him into one of his classic brothers-in-battle-hugs but even though Natasha knows Clint read the file on what has been dubbed the Manhattan incident she can see the look in his eye and before she can blink Thor is on the ground with one arm pinned behind his back and Clint's boot planted firmly on his spine.

Thor may be a hell of a lot stronger than any of the other Avengers (save the Hulk) but it's amazing what the advantage of surprise and a good understanding of physics can do. And all snipers are amateur physicists.

Tony's head pokes out of the elevator "you gonna do that to me if I come out?"

"Or us?" Bruce and Steve ask.

Natasha watches as an expression of intense confusion washes over Clint's face. Something inside of her is breaking for him.

"This is Thor Agent Barton" she says softly, "he came from Asgaurd to help you."

Slowly, reluctantly, Clint let's go of Thor, who bounds back up beaming. "It is fine my friends. I always enjoy a bit of sport before breaking my fast."

"Sorry" Clint says, holding out his hand to the demigod in apology.

"No trouble" Thor grasps Clint's hand and pumps it up and down heartily, "in truth I am most impressed you were able to take me down."

Natasha can't stand the pleasantries. Thor has a possible cure for Clint's problem and she just can't wait.

"Thor" she walks up to him and gently curls her hand around his arm-not failing to notice that Clint is watching her every move like the proverbial hawk he is- "I understand you have some sort of treatment for Agent Barton."

"Yes" The god of thunder frowns. "When Heimdall informed us of what my brother had done my father and I sat up and searched through the lore to discover a way to reverse the memory loss. Unfortunately as it is Loki's spell only Loki can undo it completely-"

Natasha feels something inside her crumple and identical frowns appear on Steve, Tony, Bruce and Clint's faces.

"- but there is something that can be done to make Agent Barton's memories more likely to return on their own-especially if proceeded by what we call the _gestat_- an emotional connection to people, places and things that will open the mind to what has been hidden from it."

Once again the stupid hormones acted up forcing unwilling tears to the edge of her eyes. Natasha did not want to cry. No one but Pepper knew anything of the assassin's relationship and when she and Clint had laughed in bed about how the big revel would go it was never anything like this. She had to hold it together.

"Thor went over the process with Tony and I as much as he could" Bruce spoke up, looking rumpled and sleepy in a plaid shirt and wrinkled khaki pants, "and as hard as it is translating magic into science that we can understand it seems like a kind of hypnosis combined with some sort of radiation that allows the mind to access memories being held in a fugue state-which is what Agent Barton's amnesia appears to be."

"I wasn't much help here" Tony said, uncharacteristically humble, "but the kind of radiation involved isn't harmful to humans in any dose."

"I don't understand any of it" Steve said, "but seeing as Odin came up with it and Bruce and Tony have rubber stamped it I'm giving it my approval as the official leader of this team."

Natasha dropped her hand from Thor's arm and turned to stare at Clint. It was all on him.

"Ok" Clint said, "I can't believe I'm doing this based on the recommendation of two aliens, the hulk, a frozen soldier and a man who thinks I'm a sociopath. But let's do it."

A grim silence came over the room as the winter dark and the lights from the city that never slept poured in the large glass windows. Then from the one woman in the room:

"You called Barton what Tony?"

….

Barton's day did not start off normally. Usually he awoke in his barracks room aboard the hellicarrier or in whatever dirt cheap motel SHEILD was paying for when he was out on a job. His last memory had been of a particularly crummy hostel in Paris.

This was new. The soft sheets, large firm bed and the smell….

The smell was everywhere. Coconut and Vanilla. It was on the sheets, coating the pillows, in the air and rose up in thick wafts of steam in the shower stall.

Understandable since that's where her shampoo was.

There was evidence of a whole shared life in this bedroom. A dresser filled with two sets of clothing (he hadn't snooped, just looked a little) perfume and makeup and women's hair stuff littered on top of it. The hairbrush contained strands of deep red curled hair.

He couldn't stop thinking of those hairs and he and the other avengers trooped down to medical to get started on the memory induction process (as it was eventually determined to be called.) Those hairs and the realization he had had before anyone else showed up on their floor that morning.

He had had sex with that woman. Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. Perhaps the most deadly and certainly one of the most beautiful women in the whole world. And he had been with her.

His mind might just be catching up to this fact but his body sure knew it. That moment before any one showed up had been so tense between them and all he had wanted to do was step forward and kiss her-and the expression on her face of total trust and desire hadn't helped at all. Even now walking beside her all he wanted to do was grab her and pull her into a bedroom and show her how much he…

How much he….

Well, he didn't know the end of that sentence. Not how much he loved her-he didn't know her. And not how much he was attracted to her-the feeling was so much stronger than that. He wanted to touch her desperately, wanted to confide in her, wanted to _trust_ her.

He'd never felt this way before. He didn't know exactly what to _do_ about it.

When they finally reached medical Banner strapped him down to some table while Thor produced a shiny looking rock (the source of the radiation) and a swinging crystal pendulum. Stark busied himself behind something that looked like a dishwasher who'd had a baby with one of those x–rays they use at the dentists

While they were getting ready another redhead, much taller than Nat, wandered in.

"Oh you're starting already!" she said, sliding over to Natasha and subtly bumping her hand in what Clint thought was a show of support. Ahh. This woman knew then.

"Oh I'm sorry how rude of me" she said, walking forward to Clint and extending her hand causing an awkward kind of lying down shaking hand situation. "I'm Virginia Potts, Tony's-"

"Everything. Boss, Girlfriend, life organizer." Tony interjected.

"But everyone calls me Pepper" the woman finished.

"Nice to meet you" Barton said. Never let it be said he wasn't polite.

"OK" Banner said, taking the shiny rock from Thor and placing it in front of Stark's machine and taking careful aim at Barton's head. "We're going to get started now."

"This involves some radiation right?" Pepper asked, "Is there any danger?"

"Not unless you happen to be pregnant" Stark said, tweaking something.

"Then just for safety's sake Natasha and I will wait behind that wall" Pepper pointed at a half-length wall that looked like it was usually used as a shelf.

Stark looked up an expression of complete panic on his face. "You trying to tell me something Pep?"

"Just trying to be safe Tony" Pepper said expression stern.

Barton angled his head so he could get a good look at Nat's face. She looked highly troubled and not a little bit hopeful.

"How does this work?" she asked, speaking for the first time since they left their own floor.

"Your science will project the force of the esben star into Barton's head" Thor said cheerfully, pointing to the shiny rock, "and after a moment I will begin to do something friend Bruce has assured me is called hippie-nosis and then the one of us with the strongest emotional connection to Barton will speak to him while he sleeps."

"Speaks to him about what" Rodgers asked.

"Anything- a memory. Something with a strong emotional connection to it."

"And this will do what-make it easier for the memory loss to go away?"

"More like make it easier for the locked away parts of your brain to break through" Banner answered.

"So Nat will be talking to me then?" Barton asked.

"That was fast" Steve muttered, "yesterday you wanted to kill her today you're going by nicknames and know she's the closest one to you."

"We talked" Barton and Natasha said in perfect sync. They looked at each other and the force of the gaze was physically uncomfortable so both looked away."

"All right" Natasha and Pepper stepped behind the wall, "just let me know when to start."

And with that they begin.

….

_It was early morning. Sunlight-the cold winter kind-was just beginning to seep through the light white curtains over the floor to ceiling windows in the room. Clint stretched luxuriously, feeling all his muscles elongate and pop back into place. _

_The woman beside him stirred and rolled over to face him. She was gloriously naked, as was he. _

"_Good Morning" she purred. _

"_Morning' Tash" Clint reached out and ran his hand down her cheekbone and threaded his fingers into her hair. _

"_Mmm" Tasha scooted closer to him and ran a hand down his shoulder to his chest and abdominal muscles. _

"_Oh" Clint laughed a little, dragging both hands through her hair now and massaging her scalp, "it's that kind of a morning is it?"_

"_It appears it is" Nat said, moving just close enough to kiss him. _

_Their mouths dueled lazily. It was Saturday and there were no shield meetings, not Avengers stuff and barring emergency, no need to save the world today. Meaning they could stay in bed and do…what they wished. _

_Clint wrapped his other hand around Natasha's ribcage and stroked her skin, then used the new position to leverage her so he could roll her over on her back. Then he ran his hands up and down her body respectively and grabbed her hands, holding them above her head with one of his. _

"_Mumm, what's this?" Her green eyes gleamed. _

_Clint smiled and tightened his hand just enough so she wouldn't be able to move her arms but not tight enough to hurt. He ran his other hand down her arms stroking her soft skin with two fingertips, down her shoulder, between her breasts and straight to her core. _

"_Oh" she moaned and arched as his fingers moved into her, "I like this."_

_Clint laughed a little and moved his head down to kiss her again-his beautiful, amazing wife. But as he kissed and his fingers moved in tandem Tasha started to struggle with his hold over her arms. _

"_I want to touch you" she moaned breathily, hips starting to move in time with his fingers. _

"_Not yet." Removing his fingers from her earns Clint a groan of protest. Kissing her stifles it. _

_Clint loves doing this to her. Drawing out sex to the point where she can barely speak. There's always been a one-upmanship quality to the sex they have. Who can frustrate the other the more, who can make the other come the hardest._

"_You are so fucking hot" he says unable to help it, sliding his hand up her torso to her breasts. "You have no idea the things I want to do to you."_

"_Do them," she moans, eyes half shut and head tilted back as his lips ravish her neck. She tastes so incredibly good. "But first get inside of me or I'll kill you."_

_Death threats weren't all that uncommon in their sex life either. _

_It's a lazy morning though and Clint doesn't really feel like dragging it out to the point where her threats get specific. So he obligingly slips his cock inside of her and they both let out a sigh of contentment._

"_Oh yes" Tasha moans. "That feels good."_

"_Mm" Clint groans and sets his head in the hollow between her neck and shoulder and sets to thrusting._

…..

"…And then we found Beacon's head guard huddled in the corner and I took him out-payback for the way he treated me when I was letting them hold me for a few days- and we evaced to this hotel on the bay of Lisbon-pretty nice for SHEILD actually-and we decided to blow off the debrief for two days and had a little vacation…"

…

"_Oh yes, yes!" Natasha was always pretty vocal about her pleasure and Clint gloried in it. The noises she made only spurred him on and he felt his orgasm building…_

…

"…two days ago we got a tip that Loki was seen in the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty. Sitting on the flame if you can believe it. Anyway the mission was only to meet with the one person who said they saw him-a helicopter tour pilot, so we decided that it was a three person job-just in case of ambush- and I'd been tired lately so we-well, mostly me but you argued with me about it-decided that I could sit this one out and then…"

…

_The sun was higher in the sky now, beams running their golden hands over Natasha's skin as she lay totally bare and uncovered on the bed. _

"_I love you" Clint told her, reaching out and running a hand down her side. _

_Natasha smiled. It was rare that she said it back, but he knew she felt it and that was all that mattered._

…

Steve, Bruce, Tony, Pepper and Thor watched as Natasha went over the events of the last month for the sleeping Clint as Thor twirled a purple jeweled pendulum above his head. Clint appeared to be deeply asleep, arms and face relaxed.

The boys and Pepper all exchanged a look.

"Lady Natasha" Thor began tentatively, "perhaps-while the events of the last month are no doubt important to Agent Barton-memories more tied to emotion would no doubt make this process more effective."

Natasha just stared back at them. How could she go through her most intimate memories with this man, her husband, the father of her child, with the whole team in the room? When the team wasn't even aware of their relationship?

Pepper spoke up. "Maybe Tasha needs some privacy for this. Thor do you really need to be doing that with the pendulum?"

"Lady Pepper I could perhaps confine the hippie-nosis to the portion of the treatment when Barton is awake-"

Thor was cut off by the sound of blaring claxons. The built in alarm system for when the Avengers were needed.

"We need to cut this short" Steve stood up, suddenly in leader mode, "Thor, wake up Barton-we might need him."

"But we have to do this" Natasha protested, "Clint needs his memory back-"

"I'm not disputing that Natasha" Steve's voice was compassionate but firm, "but we'll have to do this another time. Right now-Avengers Assemble!"

**A/N**: alright here we go again! Yes, a cliffhanger-I suck I know. But I love all of you-especially my 96 wonderful reviewers. Let's see if we can raise the number of reviews with this chapter to 120, ok?

And a little bonus for your consideration: I recently learned the term head canon-as in the canon for the fandom that exists in your head. And I think as a BlackHawk community we have established a sort of communal head canon with certain things agreed upon. Here is a list of what I have noticed personally.

Clint and Natasha sleep together for comfort long before they have sex.

Clint can cook, sing, play guitar…

Both Clint and Natasha are polyglots.

Clint is more emotional than Natasha and definitely, definitely says I love you first.

. If you've noticed some I haven't please let me know! Whoever can name the most gets a cookie!


	5. The year of getting to know us part two

**Author's Note: ** So first, about Clint and Natasha's undercover names. I just couldn't help myself (you should know this by now about me.) It allowed me to write a couple of sentences that would have made me ecstatically happy had they been in newspapers or something. Second, Clint being 35 at the "start" of this fic, has a past. It will be referenced in this chapter and appearing more in future chapters. And Third this is a very, very long and very, very explicit (sexually so) chapter. Fair warning. Sometimes I'm really proud of this chapter, sometimes I think it wouldn't be out of place in a trashy romance novel. So it's up to you to decide-was it any good for you? Last I'm sorry it took me so long to write this-but I really wanted to get their first time and the development of their relationship right.

**Blackhawk Down Chapter Five:**

**The Year of Getting to know us part 2**

_**December 28**__**th**__** 2006- Hellicarrier, somewhere over the Pacific**_

_Its three days after Christmas when Coulson and the Black Widow meet for the first time. In order to get them in a room together Barton had to agree to give up haunting the observation deck for two weeks so Romanoff could have it. It wasn't like he was giving up much-he doubted they'd be on the carrier for another two days much less two weeks. _

"_Agent Coulson, Agent Romanoff. Agent Romanoff, Agent Coulson." Barton perfunctory introduces his handler to the deadly spider he brought home as they all crowded into Coulson's organized office. _

_Phil and Romanoff are eying each other warily. Barton knows that Romanoff is thinking she could take Phil if she needed too-which she probably could (he's never sparred with anyone whose as good as her and if they were the same size and he didn't have the advantage of superior reach and arm strength she'd be kicking his ass all the time instead of just half the time) but Coulson is deceptive in his bureaucratic suit. The man has hidden depths. Barton knows it well._

_Coulson breaks the staring contest first. Thus far Barton has not seen anyone been able to bear the full weight of the Black Widow's stare for long. _

"_I have your first mission Agent Romanoff."_

"_It's about time sir" Romanoff says seriously. _

_Coulson hands Romanoff a file, the same one Barton's been scrutinizing for days. "You're going under cover in Portland Oregon to watch the actions of Dr. Hamish Grant and his wife Melissa. They're suspected of Plutonium smuggling. You're cover will be as a Carpenter husband and wife team updating the Grant home. SHEILD already got you the contract."_

"_Scarlett?" Romanoff questions, looking at the thick file "you named me Scarlett? Seriously?"_

"_You will be Scarlett and Jeremy Fusco" Coulson continues, "and during the week you will watch the Grants. Weekends they spend in Salem Oregon with their daughter, son in law and two grandchildren. It has already been determined by other agents that their family has nothing to do with the smuggling nor do they continue their smuggling activities while on these trips. So weekends you will return to the hellicarrier either for more training or you will be sent on short term assignments. We expect this mission to last a minimum of six months."_

_Romanoff turns her stare on Barton, the look on her face clearly unhappy. "I'm used to working alone…"she starts._

"_Not at SHEILD, agent." Coulson smacks down his authority like the hand of god. "Here you're no good to us if you won't work with a partner. And Barton's the best we got."_

"_Barton doesn't normally work with a partner" Romanoff shoots back. _

"_That's changing" Coulson says. "You're his responsibility until Fury trusts you and this mission requires a two person team. It's also the perfect way to evaluate your skill at undercover work and your flexibility in changing assignments quickly. But let me make it clear Barton is in charge here. Regardless of your years of experience in the field Barton is your senior when it comes to field work"-when it comes to everything Barton thinks-"and you will follow his direction whether you like it or not."_

_Feeling a little left out of the conversation Barton asks the one question that didn't have an obvious answer in the briefing packet. "What's our cover excuse for slipping away every weekend?"_

"_Sick parents in San Francisco" Coulson says, "Now you need to be ready to leave in three hours. We'll take the quintjet to Fort Lewis in Olympia and from there the two of you will drive to Portland. I'll be monitoring the operation from the fort and we can have backup to you in about 10 minutes by jet should you need it. Now get ready."_

…_.._

_Natasha is incredibly uncomfortable going deep undercover with Agent Barton. It's not that she doubts his skills in the field-he was able to follow her without her realizing it and she's seen him shoot that stupid bow of his- but the idea of living with a man she owes her life to is more than a little uncomfortable._

_She's also never had a deep cover assignment. Before she left the Red Room and struck out as an independent contractor the longest she was under was a week and a half. But she knew what happened to deep cover operatives. _

_They got soft. And they got close. To one another. _

_She didn't want to be close with Barton. She didn't need a friend; she didn't need a lover. And it was obvious he was opposed to both. _

_And Agent Coulson had made it extremely clear to her that by sparing her life and bringing her to SHEILD Barton had become responsible for her every action, meaning if she left, he would be the one to hunt her down and kill her. And there would be major consequences for him as well. She didn't understand why this man she didn't know had actually put his life and career on the line in more ways than one to save her. _

_These thoughts kept running through her head as she went to the facilities department to pick up the clothing she would be using on the op. Apparently there was already a car filled with the possessions of Jeremy and Scarlett Fusco and the house they'd be staying in was already stocked with the couple's larger items. _

_She comforted herself with the idea that she'd only need to be alone with Barton for five days at a time. _

_The quintjet ride to Washington was filled with Coulson filling them in on the more obscure details of their mission. Jeremy Fusco was of Italian descent and spoke the language fluently-as did his wife Scarlett who he'd met when both were on a study abroad program in Rome to learn old world style carving. They'd known each other seven years and had been married for five. They were both master craftsmen but starting their own business had been hard so instead of doing the kind of art work they wanted they were restoring old houses to their former glory and flipping some of them. They would be living in North West Portland and only two houses down from the Grants, leaving them the perfect vantage point to watch them. Coulson had split their age difference in half making Barton seven years younger and Natasha seven years older leaving them both at 28. Scrutinizing Barton carefully Natasha decided that he could pass for 28. She knew she could._

_They left Coulson at Ft. Lewis around 8:00 pm and took the pickup loaded up for them and headed south. Barton drove. _

_The silence was deafening. And awkward. Natasha was comfortable with silence but sitting here saying nothing to this man who had saved her and then spent the next six weeks fighting with her in a carefully controlled environment was terrible. _

"_It says we have a cat" Natasha says, willing to do anything to break the silence. _

_Next to her Barton sighs and abruptly pulls off the road. He unhooks his seatbelt and turns to look at her. _

"_Look" he says, taking off his sunglasses and revealing his incredible multi colored eyes to her, "this isn't going to work-not like this. We're supposed to married. We're supposed to be in love. We need to at least be able to be friends to pull this off."_

"_How do you propose we do that?" Natasha asks, genuinely curious. _

"_I have a few ideas" Barton says, grinning in a way that makes her stomach clench._

…_._

_Halfway to Portland it occurred to Barton that they could never pull this mission off if they couldn't even talk to each other. During training he and Romanoff had gotten along fine-but they'd never had to talk, only to field strip rifles and spar and practice language drills. With him studiously avoiding any hint she was a woman-much less a beautiful one-the whole time. That wouldn't work here. He couldn't mark her as sexless in his mind and have this be something they would pull off. _

_This mission was estimated to last at least six months. In order for it to be successful their relationship needed to change. _

_So he pulled into a roadside diner and watched Romanoff as she settled warily into the booth opposite him, scanning the room discreetly for exits and possible enemy contacts. _

"_So" he said, folding up his sunglasses and setting them by the silver ware, "I think we need to start over. My name's Clint."_

_Romanoff eyes him suspiciously. "Natasha" she said in a clipped tone. _

"_Great. Nice to meet you Natasha." He holds his hand out to be shaken. _

_She takes his hand reluctantly. "It is nice to meet you Clint."_

"_Now" he says, grabbing the menu from where it was stuck between the salt and pepper shakers and perusing the pie selections, "I purpose we get to know each other a little. Do you know how to play two truths and a lie?"_

_Roman- Natasha considers it. "No."_

"_Ok, good. This is a modified version anyway. We each get to ask the other person three questions but the person answering them only has to be truthful for two answers. The third answer is earned and told when you trust the other person enough to spill."_

_Barton watches as Natasha considers his offer carefully. While he's waiting for her answer he flags down a waitress and orders two cups of coffee and a cherry pie for each of them and then plays with the plastic menu. He's never been all that good at sitting still. _

"_Here is perhaps not the place to discuss" she looks around the diner warily, "certain things."_

"_Oh that's no problem" Clint says, pulling a small disk out of his pocket and hitting a button in the center of it. "This will keep us from being recorded and mess up the auditory systems of anyone more than 3 feet away from us so all they hear is whispers.__ The house is a safe zone for talking by the way.__" _

"_In that case I am…amenable to your proposal."_

"_Great" Clint smiles, desperate to form some sort of connection to this women beyond training partner. The mission depends on it. "I'll start. Ask me any three questions you want to know."_

_He watches Natasha's inscrutable eyes and tries to guess what she'll ask. There's the Big One, obviously, but he doesn't think it will dealt with this soon. The coffee arrives. _

"_Do you know anything about being a carpenter? I don't."_

_Clint snorts into his newly arrived coffee. "Yes I do. I'm pretty god with my hands-I make my own bows and arrows so wood carving isn't anything new to me. And we'll have help with the remodeling from other SHEILD agents stationed nearby to watch the Grants outside the home actions. "_

"_Why the bow and arrow?"_

_Clint shifts in his seat. He doesn't like it when people ask this question. It degrades the beauty of his bow to have it be questioned. "A couple of reasons. One, it's very distinctive. There's only a couple other people in the world who use a bow and arrow as their calling card and most of those can't make the kind of shots I can. Two, I'm better with it than with a gun. Always have been. Not by much but you know how much the smallest percentage can count against you in the field."_

_Natasha nods, appreciating, he thinks, the professional courtesy of a true and prompt answer. Then she looks down at her hands, clasped around her own coffee cup. _

_She looks up, emerald eyes huge. "Why didn't you kill me?" _

_Clint blows a hard gust out his mouth. So she's going for the Big One early on anyway. Meeting things head on-that's the Black Widow he's been watching thus far. _

"_Pass." He says. Her frustrated expression tells him everything-this was the one question she really wanted the answer to. "What did you want me to lie to your face? That's not how partners treat each other."_

"_I thought this was two truths and a lie."_

"_Ok, we'll change it. Two truths now and one truth to come later."_

"_Fine." She rolls her eyes. The pie arrives. _

"_My turn."_

…

_Natasha is more than a little curious about what this man- Hawkeye one of the best assassins and the best marksmen in the world- could possibly want to ask her about herself. In a diner. Halfway between Olympia and Portland. Before a long term mission begins. _

_It's amazing how much her life has changed in the last six weeks. _

"_So" Barton-no Clint she reminds herself" asks, "what's your middle name?"_

_Startled she blurts out the answer before she can think, "__Alianovna__."_

"_Pretty." Clint comments, taking a fork and starting to dig into his pie. "Is Natasha Romanoff your real name?"_

"_I, I don't know" Natasha says, unsure where this certain spurt of honesty is coming from. These were all questions she had been asked by SHEILD upon her official instatement as an agent and she supposed based on what he was asking Barton-no Clint- had not read her file as she had read his. Or perhaps he had and this was a test to see how honest she would be with him. "I was very young when the red room took me. They called me Natalia Romanova and so I answered to it."_

_Clint nods, a frown on his expressive face. She realizes for perhaps the hundredth time what a good looking man her new partner is. It had been fairly difficult when they were training and he did not wear shirts with sleeves to not be caught staring at his arms. _

_She feels a totally uncharacteristic blush beginning to rise in her cheeks and toys with her pie to avoid having to look at Clint any longer. _

"_Well we might as well be even" Clint says, sliding his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles under the table- perfectly relaxed posture belayed by his hyper alert eyes. "Why did you agree to come with me back to SHEILD?"_

_Natasha purses her lips together and thinks of what her answer should be. He was helping her after all, that was immediately clear when she became of his presence. But she had a bullet or two left after their shootout. She could have taken him out. He wouldn't have been expecting it. _

_The truth was she didn't know why she hadn't killed him-why she came with him. And she didn't need to answer the third question now. She could think about it. _

"_Pass." She says, shoving a forkful of pie into her mouth. _

_Clint nods, seeming pleased. "All right. That's a start at least. Now we need to get going- and remember, when we leave here we're Jeremy and Scarlett, not Clint and Natasha."_

…_.._

_The second leg of the trip actually passed in a comfortable way as "Jeremy" and "Scarlett" play silly word games and" do you remember" to solidify the details of their cover. They get into Portland late, turning the pickup down Hawthorn Street around 11 o'clock at night and parking in front of a cozy two story house with a wide front porch painted a bright yellow with dark blue trim. It was classy and quirky and the overall beauty of it made Clint smile. _

_Clint-Jeremy, walked over to his wife and slung his arm across her shoulders as they stood in the night air staring at their new home-and more importantly the house two lots down where the grants live. _

"_Well I know we bought it online and it's only temporary" Jeremy said, rubbing his wife's shoulder and silently congratulating Natasha when she didn't tense up or flinch at his touch, "but I think we found a pretty good home base for a while."_

_Scarlett turned to her husband and smiled, a real smile. "I agree. And who knows-this could be the perfect place to start a family."_

_Jeremy's jaw dropped. "You mean that?" he asked, voice heavy with the promise of tears of joy._

"_I mean it" Scarlett said, placing a hand each on her husband's broad shoulders. She started squealing when he unexpectedly picked her up and started twirling her around. _

"_At your three a clock" Natasha whispered, "lady in 402 staring out the window with a wistful expression."_

"_That's Melissa Grant" Clint whispered, burying his head in her shoulder to disguise the movement of his lips, just in case anyone knew how to read them. "She's thinking what a cute couple we make."_

_He pulled away and gently set Scarlett down on her feet. "I know you're beat hon, from all the driving today-why don't we just go to bed and deal with the clients and new neighbors tomorrow?"_

"_Sounds perfect" Scarlett smiled. "I just need to feed Sebastian and we can crash."_

"_Mmm" Jeremy wrapped his hands around Scarlett's waist and pulled her closer to him. "Sounds promising." _

"_It does, doesn't it" Scarlett responded as Natasha cursed her stomach from fluttering like she was a lovesick girl. _

_Jeremy leaned into Scarlett and brushed her lips with his quickly and gently. "You find Sebastian and I'll make the bed ok?"_

"_Deal."_

…_._

_The two assassins stood on either side of the double bed and stared at each other. _

"_Ok here's the drill" Clint said, sounding remarkably like he had when teaching the new recruits, "It's highly unlikely anyone will come into this room when we're sleeping and even more unlikely that anyone could without waking one or both of us up with plenty of time to plan something. But we have to be prepared. Meaning we sleep together-like two people who are married and in love do."_

"_You don't mean-" Natasha started._

"_No, I don't." Clint said, briskly cutting off that avenue of conversation. The only way he was going to get through this particular part of the mission was by pretending his so cold, deadly and sexy partner was in effect sexless. _

"_Ok" Natasha agreeably climbed into bed. It wasn't like she hadn't been through worse. And in an odd way she trusted Clint. She certainly trusted his instincts and his shooting. And he wouldn't have gone through all the trouble he had with her only to kill her in her sleep. _

_Clint climbed in the other side of the bed, took a deep breath and scooted towards the Widow lying next to him and slowly and gently spooned her, reaching out to lay a hand across her stomach. _

_Natasha immediately tensed. Clint could tell she wasn't used to being touched in a manner that didn't indicate violence but he thought after their little display in the front yard she'd be ok with this. He knew he was being forced to trust her here. There was no reason she couldn't kill him in his sleep and just take off, never to have to deal with SHEILD again. _

_Clearly she was thinking the same thing. _

"_Why didn't you just kill me?" she whispered_

_It was time for the Big One it appeared. "I don't really know how to explain it." He said. "I went into the mission despising you-you were just this indiscriminate killer. But I didn't understand you even with all I knew about you. There were so many inconsistencies. Like how you would give money to the homeless and make so many of your kills painless. Then I saw you with Fitzroy and that kid and I could tell you weren't this completely cold blooded killer like I thought you were. I could tell there was something about you that was as resigned as I was to the work that we do. And you were still-I don't really know how to put it-human. Not many people in this business are."_

_Natasha stared down at her clasped hands wrapped around her pillow. "What if you were wrong?"_

_Totally surprising her a gentle squeeze came across her abdomen. "I wasn't."_

_Natasha continued her inspection of her nails-clipped and painted with clear varnish to fit the image of a woman who worked with her hands. "Does this mean you trust me?"_

"_I trust you enough to sleep with you." Clint said. "Goodnight Natasha."_

"_Goodnight Clint."_

_Clint seemed to fall asleep immediately, the deep untroubled sleep of the trusting. Natasha remained awake longer, eventually lulled to dreamland by his steady breathing and the reassuring thump of his warm heartbeat behind her._

_What she didn't know but would find out later: Clint had never slept through the night next to any woman, not even his ex-wife. But then he'd never had a partner before either._

…

_**December 2006-April 2007- Multiple Locations**_

_The initial meeting with the Grant's went very well as Jeremy and Scarlett walked through their three story painted lady and took measurements. Natasha showed an unexpected talent for concept sketches and Clint was truly gifted when it came to wood working. _

_Together they watched the Grant's for the first week, taking careful note of everything in their home and keeping track of the phone tap they'd set up. It was more than Clear the Grant's found them to be an adorable couple- especially after they'd caught them kissing when they'd come a little too close to being caught setting up the tap on the phone line. _

_Neither assassin knew how they felt about the kiss. It was painful obvious to each of them that the other was an extremely attractive specimen of their sex and competent to boot. But this was the first week of their official partnership and they both knew the stakes. There was no room for recreational sex here. _

_Then the weekend came and they drove the two hour trip to Olympia and took the quintjet to the hellicarrier. It was time for their first official short term assignment-their first assassination as a team. _

…_._

_Brussels was cold and snowy. The natives walked about with heavy fleece caps and scarves tucked into long overcoats. _

_Clint was having none of it. He worked best with his arms free. _

_Natasha watched shivering even in her fur coat in sympathy as the light flashes off the piece of mirror Clint had set up on the roof across from the café as a signaling device. It was her job to lure Anton Fisher, a cutting edge chemist who used his talents to make a brand of heroine that was 10 times as addictive as the regular stuff, with half the negative side effects. If it hit the street there was no way of knowing what kind of havoc would be wreaked. He was currently in negotiations with 4 drug cartels to sell his formula. The night before Clint and Natasha had killed the bidder for the Russian cartel and had Natasha take his place. She would win the bidding war with a fake account someone in SHEILD's cyber division had set up. Lure Anton back to her hotel to celebrate and along the way, in a deserted ally, Clint would kill him. _

_Coulson quarterbacked the op from the carrier, his voice in both agents' ears. It went off without a hitch. One more dangerous drug forever off the streets and one more scumbag gone for good. _

_Fury couldn't admit it to their faces but he was impressed with how well Barton and Romanoff worked together after only a week. _

…_.._

_**April 2007- Hellicarrier, somewhere over the Atlantic**_

_Time began to pass quickly as Jeremy and Scarlett worked on the Grant's house during the day and Natasha and Clint spied on them at night. The two developed a serious respect for each other and on their weekend missions a deep commitment to watching the other's back. Their partnership began to form in every sense of the word. _

_Winter turned to spring and spring to summer. 8 assassinations and 4 short term covert ops later and slowly Clint and Natasha began to change. They became a unit, a cohesive moving set of parts that corresponded so well no one could tell the individual parts apart. They slowly opened up-Natasha blooming like the proverbial flower in the attention Clint lavished on her and their partnership. And Clint himself came out of the hard shell he had maintained at SHEILD for so many years and especially since his divorce a year ago._

_It was little things at first. Remembering how the other liked their coffee. Changing their sleeping arrangements so Clint wasn't always the one spooning Natasha. Falling immediately to sleep in each other's arms instead of staying awake waiting for a fatal blow. Sparring matches that became legendary and highly anticipated spectator sports when they were on the hellicarrier. _

_Then one night while on the carrier Clint heard Natasha screaming through the thin metal wall that separated their quarters. He immediately got up and picked the lock for her sterile, mostly metal quarters, walking in without hesitation. Only to find her brandishing a gun at him. _

"_Tasha" Clint said, swallowing deeply. It was the first time he'd called her anything but Natasha but the instinct to shorten her name had been bugging him for weeks. "Tasha it's me. Clint. You can put the gun down."_

"_Clint?" Natasha asked, voice scared and confused with sleep. _

"_Yeah it's me" Clint moved closer and wrapped his hand around the butt of the gun. "Give me the gun ok 'Tash?"_

"_Ok" Natasha sounded heartbroken and confused as she handed over the firearm. _

_Clint ejected the magazine from the gun and popped out the round in the chamber, setting the empty weapon on the desk table. Slowly, with his hands up to indicate his peaceful intention-because Natasha was lethal weather she was armed or not- he approached the bed, sitting down by Natasha in the gloom._

"_You ok Nat?" he asked, letting himself go all out with the nicknames that had been crowding his brain for so long._

"_I just….I had a…"_

"_A nightmare. That's ok. The best of us have them. You think you can go back to sleep?"_

"_I-no."_

"_Ok" Clint pulled down the covers covering Natasha and slipped under them. _

"_What are you doing?" Natasha asked, voice more tired than protesting. _

"_I'm going to sleep with you. This bed is barely big enough but you never have nightmares at home."_

_It didn't escape either of their notice that he referred to their cover house as 'home.' But neither mentioned it. _

"_You can't just sleep with me" Natasha protested, but her heart wasn't in it. _

"_Sure I can" Clint said. "We do it five days a week." He lay down next to her, pulling her down with her and wrapped both his arms around her waist. "Now sleep."_

"_Ok" Natasha breathed, relaxing into his embrace, "but just for tonight. And if you call me Tasha or Tash or Nat again I'm going to have to kick your ass especially publicly."_

"_You can try" Clint chuckled. "night Tasha."_

_Needless to say they slept together every night after that, whether on the carrier or off. Coulson clearly knew but ignored it and Fury didn't seem to know or care. Their success rate was outstanding- a true 100% with all sorts of valuable intel coming in on the Grant thing indicating a problem much larger than a dentist and his wife refining plutonium. They could fuck in public for all he cared. The counsel wouldn't like it and Hawkeye was still responsible for every action the Black Widow took but the way they worked together it didn't seem to be a problem. _

_But it changed everything. _

…_.._

_**July 4**__**th**__** 2007- Portland, Oregon**_

_They became real friends and suddenly neither of them could ignore the massive attraction they felt to each other anymore. Natasha started touching herself in the shower, tentatively, and whishing Clint was doing it instead. And Clint started having difficulties not getting hard ons when they snuggled up at night. Both of them yearned for the few kisses they could reasonably share in front of the neighbors. _

_It all came to a head on the Fourth of July. It was a Friday and normally they'd be on rout to the carrier because the Grants were with their kids in Salem but Coulson had deemed it too suspicious that they would miss such a major neighborhood holiday. _

_The lights overhead from the fireworks were amazing, sparkling jeweled constellations that flared to life brighter than the stars and died a quick fading death. The whole neighborhood was grouped out on Waterfront Park watching them as they were lit one by one across the river. Families crowded on blankets and lay back staring at the show. _

_They'd gotten to the point seven months into this assignment where they couldn't tell if they were pretending anymore. Either of them. It wasn't like the odds on this happening were long: though they were both experienced agents long term deep cover was a rarity in any agent's career for a reason-people tended to specialize in it because it was so stressful. Covers became more than just covers when you were living them every day, day after day, week after week, month after month. _

_So at this point they were just as much Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff as they were Jeremy and Scarlett Fusco- and while Clint and Natasha liked and respected each other, Jeremy and Scarlett were in love. _

_So they back on their plaid flannel blanket, head to head, and stared up at the fireworks with the rest of the street, whispering softly to each other occasionally. And when Clint's head turned just the right way and they were both smiling from a silly joke Natasha had just told, their mouths nearly met. _

"_I came with you because you offered me an out" she suddenly blurted, averting her eyes from his, "and anything would have been better than the hell I was living through. I was totally alone and somehow I knew if I went with you I wouldn't be anymore."_

"_Thank you" Clint said, "For trusting me." And then he rolled over slightly and kissed her. _

_They had kissed before of course, to sell their cover. Pecks in front of neighbors. Even made out once when they came a little too close to getting caught in the targets living room when Clint was supposed to be installing baseboards he hand carved. But this was different. _

_Nobody told them they had to sell this kiss. _

_This kiss was for them. _

_Their mouths met slowly, hesitantly, gently. Closed at first, then opening slightly, caressing each other's lips. _

_Natasha rolled over and propped her upper body up so she could lean down and deepens the kiss, which was now upside down . Clint snaked his hands up her face and into her hair. Tongues got involved. _

_The fireworks were truly beautiful-the night itself gorgeous. But there wasn't any mystery as to by the Fusco's suddenly decided to go back inside. _

…

_The blanket was hastily dropped on the kitchen table and Clint was pressed up against the kitchen wall before either of them spoke. Clint wrapped an arm around her waist and once again wormed his fingers into her hair. _

_He stared into her eyes. Blue on green. Unblinking. _

"_Tell me doesn't make me a pedophile" he said, completely deadpan. _

_For a moment Natasha froze, thinking the 14 year age difference actually meant that much to him. Then she burst out laughing and buried her head in his shoulder for a moment. "And here I thought you could count."_

"_Only as high as I have fingers to count on."_

_Natasha smiled and it made Clint's heart clench. It was so different these last two months, seeing her happy and energetic-like a regular person, not a highly trained brain washed child assassin. _

"_So you must not be able to count at all now, seeing as your fingers are otherwise occupied."_

_Clint wiggled his fingers around her waist and wandered them down to her hipbone. With his other hand he shifted down to massage her neck. He pressed down on a knot and the release of tension made her moan. _

_Oh he wanted to hear that sound again. _

"_They could be even more occupied." He said voice husky. _

_Natasha eyes were bright and languid when she looked at him. "Show me."_

_Clint moved his hand from her hip to her thigh and quickly pulled her leg around his waist, pulling them closer together and turning them, slamming Natasha into the kitchen wall. She retaliated by wrapping her arms around his shoulders and going in for a kiss. _

_Through the window the fireworks lit up the kitchen. _

_Clint grabbed her other leg and effortlessly lifted her off the ground. Their lips fused together and Natasha tangled her fingers in his short blond hair. _

"_I want you" she told him, panting as she pulled away from his mouth "Do you know I've never wanted anyone before?"_

_Clint smiled. "I'm honored." He said, dead serious. "I want you too."_

_Clint gently unhooked Natasha's legs from around his waist and pulled her up into a bride hold. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him, doing her best to distract him as he carried her up the stairs to their bedroom. _

_Reaching the bedroom door Clint turned around and bumped it open with his back so Natasha wouldn't hit the doorknob. Still securely in his arms, arms around his neck the Russian wiggled her hips to be let down. With her feet on the floor she peeled her shirt off and crooked her finger at Clint._

"_Come here" she ordered, voice smoky with lust. _

_He came closer and she grabbed the front of his t-shirt and drags him in for a kiss. It was more than a little filthy and clearly shows him what she wants him to do down below._

_Clint grabs Natasha's hips and slides his hands down to her ass and pulls her towards him with two hands and grinds against her, his already hard cock pulsating against her. It makes Natasha tremble and wetness pool between her thighs. _

_She's never chosen before. Her marks that the red room decreed she get sexual with she got sexual with, barring another solution. With SHEILD seductions had involved only a little play acting and no sex-but still no choice. But here, now, in this room, she is choosing. The experience is heady and her body has never felt like this before. Trembling, waiting to come undone. And wanting this man, and only his man, to do the undoing._

_She breaks away from the kiss long enough to drag his t-shirt over his head and slides her hands down his chest, past his pecks and down his abdominal muscles to the waistband of his jeans (the nature of their mission means Clint lives in t-shirts and jeans during the week. She loves it) she fingers the button on his jeans, pops it out and drags her fingers down the zipper, pressing against his cock as she does so._

_It makes Clint shiver with need. He grabs onto her torso and rubs his hands over her ribcage, sliding his hands underneath the back of her bra and unhooking it, tossing the lace scrap to the floor and brings his hands around to caress her breasts. _

_Natasha throws her head back and moans. He covers her mouth with his and swallows the noise. Hands on her hips now he picks her up again and gently tosses her on the bed. With a predatory gleam in his eye he stalks over and she lies back on the pillows awaiting him. He pulls down her jeans and underwear in one smooth motion and she raises her hips to assist him in getting them off. _

_The sight of her finally naked takes his breath away._

_She watches as he shucks his own remaining clothing, so hard his shaft is standing up perpendicular to his stomach, the tip glistening with pre-come. The sight made something clench repeatedly inside of her and her already humming clit started to pound with desire. She needs him to touch her and she knows how to make that happen without asking so she spreads her legs on the bed and raises her hand to tease a line down her body between her breasts. Just when she's about to reach her center and touch herself his hand grabs her wrist. _

_She looks at him. He looks back. His pupils are so dilated his eyes are almost black. _

"_Un un darlin'. That's my job." By this time she's adjusted to Tasha, Tash and Nat. Darlin' is new though. She thinks she might like it._

_He takes her hand and raises it to his mouth kissing it, taking one of her knuckles into his mouth and swirling his tongue around her finger. Then he took his own hand and ran it down the same path her hand had traveled. When he came to her open mound he ran two fingers firmly through her folds, causing a deep moan to come out of her. Her cunt is dripping with moisture._

"_You want to see how occupied my fingers can be? I'm going to make you come Tasha" he informed her, "I'm going to make you come till you scream." _

_Then he quirks two fingers inside of her and pressed hard on her G-spot, the heal of his hand pressing into her clit. _

_She comes immediately, an orgasm ripping through her hard. Natasha's voluntary sex life has been surprisingly minimal and she's had surprisingly few orgasms herself much less had an orgasm with a partner and the stimulus is simply too much. She cries out. Clint's cock twitches and he fights not to come himself._

"_That's it." He leans forward and kisses her forehead as she falls back on the pillows and shakes. "So beautiful Tash."_

_She grabs his hand and pulls on it, using the leverage to topple him on top of her. The way he falls on her leaves his cock perfectly lined up with her cunt, pressing against her clit._

"_Oh Jesus Nat I want to fuck you" Clint says, voice horse and gravely. She responds by tilting her hips up, making his cock thrust against her most sensitive spot. _

"_Yes." She moans. "__**Yes."**_

_He lines up his cock with her cunt and pushes inside. The feeling of being filled relives the terrible aching Natasha's been enduring. One of Clint's arms wraps around her shoulders, his other hand pushes against the headboard for leverage. _

_When you want the person you're with its so different Natasha discovers. Returning Clint's thrusts is no chore and the heavy pulse of his hardness inside of her is only an additional turn on. He's long and thick and nothing has ever felt as good as he does inside of her. _

_Clint kisses her again. She's so wet and warm and so very tight-and what she said about never wanting anyone before is swelling his head in the worst way (and some other places-he doesn't think he's ever been this hard.) She wraps her legs high around his waist and he grabs the sensitive skin of her inner thighs and rubs circles with his thumbs. She's moaning and clenching and he's thrusting and kissing (he hasn't been able to tear his lips away from hers and even if he does they only travel as far as her neck. Generally speaking he's not for kissing during sex anymore because it makes it so intimate but he can't seem to help himself here.) Barely any words are exchanged but it's all so intimate and amazing that they both know there's no way to go back._

_Clint thrusts deep inside of her and hits some spot Natasha didn't even know existed and she can't help from letting out a small scream. _

_He looks up from kissing her and she's seen all kinds of expressions on his face but this one has them all beat. "Yeah? You like that?" he pants out. _

_His voice is so sexy, deep and rough and all husky right now and it makes her clench inside._

_She slips her legs so the death grip she has on his waist loosens and her feet rest on his calves instead. The new angle is fantastic. _

"_Yeah" she moans. "Oh yeah. I like that."_

_He hits the same spot over and over and over again until she can't keep little cries from coming out of her mouth. He trails kisses down her neck and collarbone and then twirls his tongue into her ear. _

"_I believe I promised to make you scream" he says, voice deeper than he's ever heard it. "And that one before didn't count. I mean a real scream."_

_She's going to come any second now and she's desperate for a release. "You did."_

_He reaches down and hitches both of her legs above his shoulder, bending her double and proceeds to hit that spot he found three times in quick succession. _

_She doesn't really want to give him the satisfaction because there's an odd game of one-upmanship going on here but she can't help the scream of pleasure that rips through her throat. _

"_That's it baby" he says, kissing her deeply and in a way that would make a nun faint to see it, "god you are so fucking beautiful when you come."_

_His voice is-she doesn't know how to describe it but hearing him call her beautiful and the sensitivity of her recent orgasm makes her come again, so hard she couldn't make a noise if she wanted to. _

"_Oh fuck. Tasha, Jesus that it so…" and then he lets out a loud grunt/shout and she can feel him come inside of her, thrusting erratically and spurting hot come._

_After she recovers enough to notice she realizes he's holding his weight off of her on his arms and she reaches up and knocks them out from under him with a well-placed gentle blow to the forearm area. He looks at her quizzically. _

"_I like you on me."_

"_Mm. I like you under me."_

_She laughs and so does he and any lingering tension there was breaks and they are suddenly two lovers who are very good friends-perhaps the only friends the other has-who are comfortable with each other and the situation._

_She stretches languidly and the movement stirs him inside of her to begin to harden again._

"_Oh" she moans, "Oh, oh!"_

"_What?"_

"_That! That feels so good-you getting hard inside of me." She moans again and lifts her hips and starts to rock them. _

_Clint rolls them onto his back so he can watch her, careful not to slip out of her. He sits up against the headboard and she rises in his lap, leaning back against his propped up knees. _

"_Oh, oh oh!" She rocks back and forth, clenching him as he gets thicker inside of her._

_Clint runs his hands up her sides and gently thumbs her nipples, bending down to capture one in his mouth and sucking hard. The act runs a line of pure pleasure from her breast to her groin and makes Natasha cry out even louder. _

"_Yes!" she pants, riding him for all he's worth, "oh yes, oh god, please…" and then she comes, clenching down on his fully erect cock and falling against his chest. _

_After a moment of complete silence in which only the faint boom from the fireworks could be heard Clint speaks up. "That was the sexiest thing I have ever, ever seen."_

"_Yeah" Natasha asks, pressing hot open mouthed kisses to his chest and neck, "You liked that?"_

"_Watching that was…Jesus Natasha I don't think you have any idea what you do to me." Natasha is reserved for serious situations now, such as yelling at her in the field, or apparently, telling her how astounding she is in bed. _

"_Mmm." She moans, rolling her hips over his and grinding down on his erection. "I think I have some idea."_

"_Fuck" Clint swears and leans back on one hand so he can thrust up into Natasha. She gasps but continues to mouth him, licking around his nipples now. _

"_That's it" she moans, "please fuck me. Jesus Clint this is so good, it's so amazing to be able to-" she cuts off, embarrassed. _

"_To be able to choose?" He asks, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. _

"_Yes" she looks him straight in the eye, pressing her upper body to his and gently rolling her hips and using her inner muscles to squeeze his erection. "To choose."_

_Clint smiles and kisses her, abruptly rolling Natasha over to the sound of her squealing and thrusting deeply into her. _

_They continue for much of the night, giving up only when the birds of dawn inform them they have mere hours to get ready and back to the hellicarrier for their weekend assignment. _

….

**December 2****nd****, 2012- Quintjet somewhere over the Southeast**

It's been decided that due to the unknown status of Clint's head injury that Rodgers' should fly the quintjet as they head to the sight of the latest Loki related disaster.

To be fair this can't really be blamed on Loki but more on his rabid fangirls and boys who claim he is just misunderstood and maybe the earth would have been better off with him in charge and even he can't seem to stand.

Clint had read up on them the night before, not really being able to sleep. This memory loss thing was too weird for any real rest to be occurring. Except during the memory induction procedure-then he had slept-and dreamt.

Oh how he had dreamed.

He looked up at Nat sitting across from him in the back of the jet. She looked angry, exhausted and nervous. Not at all the picture of the Black Widow he had gotten from reading their mission files, which Fury had sent over as soon as he realized the situation. Not at all the warm loving woman from his dream.

But at least now he had conclusive truth she was telling the truth. His dream had been so vivid, so absolutely true to life that he had been hard pressed to wake from it at all much less without a hard on.

In fact just now it was hard to look at her without eliciting some sort of reaction from his body. She was so beautiful, so deadly and so… his.

That is if the dream and everything she had been telling him was to be believed. He hadn't had a chance to talk to her about it as Pepper whisked her away right before they left. But according to Stark and Banner (who were not happy with the disruption of their experiment-though nowhere near as angry as Nat) it wasn't a dream but a memory. And if it was a memory, well then-holy crap. It appeared she was right about everything. He loved this woman. He had married this woman. He spent lazy Saturday mornings in bed with this woman.

He hadn't thought there would be anyone after Bobbie-especially so soon-though he guessed really it wasn't so soon was it? It had been over six and a half years.

Though he hadn't told them the nature of the memory Stark and Banner had seemed surprised that any memory at surfaced at all-much less one that was as vivid as he described. And one that had nothing to do with the mission events of the last month or so.

Yeah, he wondered what that was about. Maybe watching the recording of the procedure was worth something...

But now he had to put it out of his mind. They had a mission to complete. A weird one, but a mission at that.

It seemed Loki's army (as they called themselves, thankfully having no relation to Loki's real army which had attacked in May of 2012) had taken over a chemical factory just south of Houston. Despite being mostly teenagers the army had an overall IQ of more than 135 and a psyche profile that made Barton look positively normal. There was simply no knowing what they could do with the chemicals they had gotten their hands on. And there were their hysterical parents to deal with. It simply wasn't a job local PD could take on-especially with the multiple jurisdictional issues involved as the army was from everywhere in the world.

"So what's the plan Cap?" Iron man's voice crackled through the coms as he flew beside them in his suit. Thor was thankfully flying inside the jet-having not been cleared for airspace like stark had been.

"Same as always" Rodgers sounded weary. "Hawkeye you get up high and pick off the stragglers-non lethal shots only these are just misguided kids. Iron man you sweep the perimeter initially but then get inside and see what you tell about what they're doing. Banner we don't need the hulk on this one, we need you. So the Black Widow will get you inside to their main lab which sat imaging says is in building C-and I'll interface with the local PD and keep the perimeter tight."

"And what shall I do my friends?" Thor boomed, his voice especially loud in the confined space.

Captain America hesitated for a moment. It wasn't all that often Thor joined them on earth-much less for missions as routine as this one was looking to be. "Stick with me Thor" he finally decided, "we don't know what kind of surprises these girls may have planned for us-and if you're down low you can pick off the stragglers Hawkeye misses."

"I don't-"

"He doesn't-"

"- miss" Came simultaneously from Barton and Natasha.

Baron looks up and his eyes locked with Nat's for a moment and it was all he could do to keep breathing. How had he not noticed this level of pain in her eyes before? It was like an actual ocean of despair.

He looks away quickly. _Mind on the job Barton._

They start their descent towards the factory. Rodger's sets them down on the conveniently located helipad atop the building and each Avengers hops out to do their thing.

…

"Fuck" Natasha swears as she guides a mostly helpless Banner through the maze of booby traps and trip wires Loki's army has set up. She's never been this distracted during a mission ever. But Clint is out there with no idea how things have changed in the last six and half years-though he does seem to have familiarized himself with the new arrows he's invented since then.

And then there's the baby. She can't allow herself to get hurt in certain ways she just can't. By all rights she should have done as Pepper insisted and stayed out of this one but she couldn't Clint go back into the field for the first time since losing his memory and be without her to watch his back. No matter what Pepper said about him having a whole team Clint was usually the most isolated of any of them during a battle-up high and away from most of the fighting but still vulnerable to attacks from multiple assailants.

Still she couldn't risk triggering one of the traps. They had to go slow. Unleashing the Hulk in this confined maze filled with chemicals was not an option.

They finally reach the lab in building C and Natasha can't keep still anymore. Banner heads directly for the microscopes and reams of equations decorating the white boards and she makes a snap decision.

"Here" she says, hanging over her glock to Banner. "You know how to use this. I have to get up high and help Clint."

"Natasha I can't kill anyone-these are mostly just little girls" Banner's protests.

"Don't worry about the gun is loaded with tranqs. They should take down an elephant without harming it." In fact the tranq they use in all SHEILD standard guns is one Clint mostly devised based off of one they used in the circus when the elephants became rambunctious. "I have to go Banner."

"That's a negative Black Widow stay with Hulk" the cap breaks through her ear piece and man is he a stickler for code names during operations. Banner isn't even the hulk right now.

"Sorry Cap-something's wrong, I can feel it." And with that she makes for the roof.

"Haven't heard anything on the coms Widow" the cap responded.

"His Taser arrows disrupt coms temporarily" Natasha replied, angry their team leader didn't already know this. "Banner will be fine. I'm going."

….

Barton had it easy for the first few minutes, firing off tranq and Taser arrows and downing everyone he targeted. Thor and the Cap didn't have much to do at the perimeter. Eventually he started to run out of arrows then and that was when the extremely well organized teenage army realized if they swarmed the guy on the roof they'd have a hell of an easier time getting out of there.

Somehow-from sparring with Nat he supposed-his body was now pre-programed for a lot of non-lethal but extremely debilitating combat. Which was good-he didn't feel like killing any crazy teenagers today.

But despite all his speed and skill and dexterity eventually Hawkeye was pulled down by the sheer mass of attackers. There were over 50 of them and man where they determined. And his coms were down for now so it looked like he was on his own.

Just as he was fighting off three of them who had him a choke hold he saw a flash of red over his shoulder and the sound of gunshots. The distraction allowed him to get his own gun free and fire off more tranq rounds until the number of kids on the roof was down to a more manageable 30.

"Got bored babysitting Banner?" he asked as he and Natasha moved into an instinctual back to back stance.

"Knew something was wrong with your Hawk ass" Nat responded

"Is that like a married person's thing?" he asked, well aware the com link for a 10 foot radius around his was down. She hadn't exactly specified that their marriage was a secret but it sure felt like the rest of the team had no idea what was going on with them.

"You tell me" she said, taking down a lanky teenage boy with a thigh choke, " I've only been married once. I think it's like a partner's thing."

Hawkeye just nodded and kept his mouth shut as back to back he and the widow proceeded to cut a swath through Loki's army that left those remaining conscious running.

The coms suddenly crackled to life. "'e got an influx of kids heading this way" Caps voice was tired but happy, "Could use some extra help in arresting them all."

"We're on it" Hawkeye and the Black Widow spoke in synch again, then looked at the other, each of them smiling hesitantly.

….

**Early December 3****rd****, 2012-Avengers's Tower **

Barton watches as Natasha rolls her neck. This annoying need to touch her-so strong it makes his palms tingle- had only gone away during their oh-so-brief mission earlier today. That dream he'd had had only made the feelings from this morning stronger. He didn't like this. He felt the extreme need to beat something up or break something. Or someone. Preferably Loki. Beating up on his sad little army that the guy didn't want hadn't been satisfying. And despite the shortness of the mission they sheer number of people to be arrested and processed and guaranteed the Avengers were stuck in Houston for hours and hours.

This memory loss was just beyond annoying. It wasn't like he had just gone back to where he was six years ago. He had gone back to where he was with all these new urges and feelings for a woman he was supposed to kill.

That must have been what Loki wanted he realized. Removing all memoires of her and leaving him with a disinterested sort of semi-hatred where love and trust used to be. It left him so off kilter. Wanting her and not trusting her. Wanting to touch her so badly and not knowing if he could…

Oh fuck it. She looked tense, like she'd pulled some muscle or something.

He cleared his throat. "Come here" better to not make it a question. He didn't want to know if she was uncomfortable with his touching her right now. For some reason the thought made him ache. "Let me take care of that for you."

Nat-he's schooled himself to think of her as that now-raises her eyebrows. But all the same she puts down her teacup and takes a seat in one of the bar stool chairs that ring the kitchen counter.

He walks behind and with one of his hands, moving slowly unsure if this is the right thing to do, he gently sweeps her hair into his fist.

Oh.

Well, that's familiar. The way her hair feels in her hands. But then doesn't all hair feel the same. Soft and …hairy?

He throws off the thought and sets his other hand at the base of her neck. He's good at this-massages. He's good with hands in all ways but medical care in the field could vary from wound care to getting someone in extreme pain not to fall into shock. Soothing massages could be a part of that.

He sets his fingers to work and makes his way from the base of her neck to her shoulders, letting go of her hair and allowing his other hand to wander down to her left shoulder.

She lets out a noise that sounds a lot like a moan.

Oh he wants to hear that sound again.

"That feels good" she moans, "so good."

Jesus it's just like a line from his dream and he can't seem to help it that he's starting to get an erection.

That energy from this morning is starting to build up again in between them and his hands stop massaging and start caressing. She twists her head to look at him and the look in her eyes can only be described as hungry.

"Clint…" she's whispering his name but he's not focused on the sound so much as the shape of her lips as the word leaves it. He can read lips- a leftover benefit from the terrible three months he was fully deaf-and he's seen his name said before but never so…

Oh Jesus fuck it.

He leans down and she hoists and herself up so she's sitting on her knees and twists around in the chair and then their lips and touching and he's kissing her like he's drowning, like he can somehow devour her…

The angle is too awkward, he's leaning down too far and he can't get his arms around her so when she wraps her arms around his neck he just lifts her out of the chair because all that archery has made him incredibly strong and she practically climbs up his body until her legs are wrapped tightly around his waist and her center is pressed into his rapidly hardening groin.

He carries her to the couch and sits down, leaving her in his lap. Their lips don't leave each other but she's squirming against him and he's pushing into her and Jesus it's like they're teenagers dry humping in the back seat of one of their parents cars.

He run's his hands up the inside of her thighs, forcing her legs further apart and grinds into her-he can feel the heat coming from her center on his cock and all he wants is to rip off her clothes and bury himself in her.

His lips leave hers and run down her jaw and neck. He's never wanted anyone this much in his life.

"Why do I want you so much?" he asks, kissing the hollow between her collarbones and pulling her suit down until the zip is past her breasts. "Why didn't I kill you?"

…..

Natasha stares at Clint, dazed. He's kissing a path down between her breasts and she can't stop the movement of her hips into his and she feels so empty it almost hurts, but she can't get her mind off what he just said.

_Why do I want you so much? Why didn't I kill you?_

This Clint doesn't know her. This Clint doesn't love her. He may want to be with her but it's not…it's not enough.

She manages to tell her body not now and pulls away from Clint.

"I can't do this" she says. Manners dictate the next words out of her mouth. "I'm sorry."

She climbs off him, one leg at a time and backs away.

"You don't know me now" she says, studiously not looking at his face, "you don't even really care about me now. I can't-you're not my Clint."

And with that she leaves. Headed to the cold spare bedroom she has claimed as her own.

…..

Jesus.

Barton buries his head in his hands and tries to ignore the demands of his pulsating cock. Why had he thought that was a good idea?

Well, clearly he hadn't been thinking. Even less so than normal than when sex is involved. He'd just…wanted.

He still wanted.

A cold shower sounded like a good idea right about now.

And then he had someone he needed to talk to.

….

**A/N**: That's it folks! Coming up next time: Clint meets with a very important person from his past and learns the true extent of what Loki had him do under his mind control. We learn what Loki's army was up to in that factory and the method to fix the amnesia is tried again with somewhat startling results. Also a new contender for Natasha's somewhat unclear affections is made apparent.


End file.
